BRUSSELS, April 26 (Reuters) - European Union antitrust

chief Margrethe Vestager, who has been looking into Big Tech's

partnerships with AI start-ups, met on Friday fast-growing

French start-up company Mistral AI and said the sector needs

more competition.

In February, Microsoft ( MSFT ) invested $16 million in

Mistral AI and partnered with them to make its artificial

intelligence models available through its Azure platform. It has

also invested in ChatGPT owner OpenAI.

Other high-profile AI partnerships include Amazon ( AMZN )

and Google's investments in Anthropic, triggering

regulatory concerns that tech giants may once again dominate in

this developing field as they have in other more traditional

areas.

"If we act early on, we can avoid that the #AI market gets

dominated by a few large players, like we saw happening with

#digital #platforms. We need vibrant #competition in AI, now,"

Vestager wrote on her X account.

"Good meeting with @MistralAI today," added Vestager, who

posted a photo of herself with Mistral AI executive Arthur

Mensch.

Earlier this month, publication The Information reported

Mistral AI had been speaking to investors about raising several

hundred million dollars which would give it an overall $5

billion valuation.

A fund-raising round in December gave Mistral AI a 2 billion

euros ($2.1 billion) valuation.

($1 = 0.9350 euros)