I think there's rather more to it than that. Two of these guys are on the Llama paper; the hype and momentum from that is surely responsible for a huge chunk of their valuation. If you take the big LLM-relevant papers, most of the folks with this kind of profile are already off doing some kind of startup.
The Mistral folks have impeccable timing, but are leaving FAANG somewhat late compared to their peers.
Definitely. Just to be clear, my comment wasn't to diminish the Mistral folks, they are certainly a very impressive group, but rather to contest your implication about the audience here.
The Mistral folks have impeccable timing, but are leaving FAANG somewhat late compared to their peers.