Timothée Lacroix | CTO, Mistral AI | Top 30 EMEA CTOs 2026

Career History

Timothee Lacroix is the co-founder and CTO of Mistral AI, where he leads the company’s research and technical direction. His focus is on building advanced large language models that underpin products such as Le Chat, Mistral’s conversational assistant positioned as a European alternative to ChatGPT and DeepSeek. He is responsible for ensuring the models are both cutting-edge and effective in real-world applications.

Before Mistral AI, Lacroix worked at Facebook AI Research (FAIR), now Meta’s AI division, first as a PhD student and then as a Research Engineer. During this time, he contributed to the development of the LLaMA family of large language models, publishing academic papers with Guillaume Lample and other colleagues. Earlier in his career, he was part of Facebook’s graph search team in London.

Lacroix studied computer science at École Normale Supérieure in Paris, before completing a Master’s at Paris-Saclay University and a PhD at École des Ponts.

About Mistral AI

Mistral AI was founded in April 2023 by Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample and Timothee Lacroix. In less than three years, the company’s valuation climbed to around €11.7bn ($13.8bn), supported by investors including ASML and NVIDIA. By February 2026, annualised revenue had grown to more than $400m.

The company has positioned itself as a champion of open-source generative AI, aiming to broaden access to powerful language models and reduce reliance on what it calls “big AI.” Its portfolio includes the Mistral series of models in different sizes, with the Small versions available as open source.

In July 2026, Mistral expanded its partnership with Microsoft through a multibillion-dollar agreement aimed at bringing its AI models and European infrastructure to more enterprise customers. The deal also strengthens Mistral’s position as a major European alternative to US-based AI providers.