They’re not competing in the same domain - if you look at their business model it actually is much closer to ML consulting for companies (CMA CGM, ASML, Airbus…). The big three are trying to capture B2C mainly while Mistral is full focused B2B
But that's just my best guess, and I'm saying this as one who migrated here rather than growing up here. I've also actually noticed the literal anarchists here, whereas the ones in the UK I only knew once they told me, before anyone makes a planet-of-hats kind of mistake on this.
It is done, but by very few. And the EU has made progress on uniformizing and simplifying it, but it seems to have done more progress on the B2B side than on B2C.
While the US is a much bigger consumer market than any single EU country, with significant differences in disposable income and spending power. 18% to 20% of full-time workers in the US make over $100.000. That's nearly half the entire population of France. A third that of Germany.
And even if there are differences and administrative hurdles when selling across US states borders, that road has mostly (or seems to have, from here) been paved.
Put these two together and a freelancer becomes an interesting proposition for some tasks. In Germany I could bill roughly 2.5x my after-tax salary. You also incur no other costs such as equipment and illness-as—a-loss. And… you’re really easy to fire when COVID comes around.
I think it's more complicated. Anthropic has been focused on enterprise for a long time, and OpenAI seems to be doubling down as well.