Account Executive Enterprise Public Sector

TotalEnergies turns to Mistral for oil and gas AI push. Published Sep 15, 2026 3:58 am ET TotalEnergies and Mistral have launched a three-year program worth more than $115 million (€100 million) to develop artificial intelligence (AI) models for oil and gas reservoir exploration, characterization and development. The partnership will combine TotalEnergies' geoscience and reservoir engineering expertise and subsurface data with Mistral's AI technology to develop models capable of processing and interpreting large volumes of data. The companies aim to use the models to generate multiple scenarios for developing exploration opportunities and to help optimize and extend the life of existing projects, drawing particularly on advances in agentic AI. TotalEnergies and Mistral will establish a joint scientific laboratory bringing together the energy company's subsurface teams and Mistral's scientific and technological capabilities. The program will combine nearly a century of TotalEnergies' geoscience knowledge and expertise with close to 10 petaflops of data. "Exploration and reservoir engineering are among the areas where artificial intelligence can create the greatest value for its activities. By combining a century of geoscience data, the expertise of its teams and Mistral's capabilities, Oedigital aim to develop a new generation of tools capable of supporting its experts in analyzing the most complex data and in their decision-making. "This partnership also illustrates our commitment to contributing to the development of a high-performing European digital ecosystem, supporting our competitiveness" said Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of TotalEnergies. The partnership is also intended to allow TotalEnergies to develop proprietary models using its strategic subsurface data within a European digital ecosystem. "We are delighted to take our collaboration with TotalEnergies to the next level. This project demonstrates the ability of our models to support complex industrial processes and adapt to the most demanding scientific and energy challenges. It also highlights the strength of Europe's industrial ecosystem and the importance for large enterprises of adopting state-of-the-art, customizable AI solutions that protect and respect their intellectual property," added Arthur Mensch, Co-founder and CEO of Mistral.

Sovereign AI PaaS: Numspot extends its partnership with Mistral AI. The company launched by Banque des Territoires, Bouygues Telecom, Dassault Systèmes and Docaposte is expanding its partnership with Mistral AI beyond Caisse des Dépôts. It intends to offer an end-to-end managed SecNumCloud PaaS based on the French startup's models and tools for public and regulated actors. The offering is reportedly already generating interest beyond this small circle. Published on: September 15, 2026 Mistral AI is multiplying partnerships. After Microsoft and Cloudera, it is now Numspot's turn to formalize its "go-to-market" agreement with the French startup. It was not a secret. The two partners have been working since the start of the year to include Mistral AI's platform in the set of managed services (databases, Kubernetes, etc.) that will be SecNumCloud-qualified by the end of the year or the beginning of 2027. "We obtained SecNumCloud qualification for our IaaS orchestration layer in August," says Alexis Gendronneau, AI and Data director at Numspot. "We filed an additional application at the beginning of the year to qualify our PaaS, which covers a range of managed services, including those related to AI. During the J2 stage of the qualification cycle, we began the audit of the Mistral platform against the requirements of the SecNumCloud framework," he specifies. For now, "the process is ongoing." The audit began in June 2026. At the same time, Numspot had mentioned agreements with ThinkDeep and ABA Technology. Caisse des Dépôts, the common customer driving this agreement. The AI PaaS offered by Numspot is therefore none other than Mistral AI's. It includes the startup's proprietary and open-weight AI models, Mistral Studio and Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat). Numspot handles managing the deployment of models, tools and orchestration of the underlying GPU instances. In fact, the provider relies on the services in Mistral AI's on-prem catalog. "We deploy, we operate and we perform system updates," insists Alexis Gendronneau. He adds that backup management, monitoring, rights and instance segregation are handled by Numspot. Discussions between the two partners began around a common customer: Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations. "It is a driving customer on sovereignty and innovation topics. We reached out to Mistral to address technical issues. Over the course of discussions, we found common ground to establish a partnership," says Numspot's AI and Data director. Caisse des Dépôts wants to equip 10,000 agents and executives with Mistral AI's tools. Including Banque des Territoires, Mistral AI must deploy 40,000 licenses of Mistral Vibe and Mistral Studio there. On Numspot's side, several customers have come forward to try the AI PaaS. This is the case for public actors and regulated companies, but also industrial players and healthcare specialists. These are not necessarily required to adopt SecNumCloud-qualified environments. "This allows our customers to use AI in isolated environments with complete peace of mind, and to focus on business use cases," praises Alexis Gendronneau. Here, it involves deploying business AI assistants, AI agents, RAG systems, as well as digitization and unstructured document processing mechanisms. The partnership is not exclusive, the manager affirms in response to a question from MagIT. Mistral AI could replicate the same approach with other SecNumCloud-qualified providers. "It is not relevant for us to seek exclusivity," he declares. "We are betting on the performance of our services, their ease of use, their reversibility capability. [Exclusivity] would be contrary to our values." A partnership based on Outscale's infrastructure (for now). Mistral AI's platform will be available in two Outscale cloud regions, then later with at least one other provider. Alexis Gendronneau did not wish to reveal the name of that player. Currently, Outscale and Cloud Temple are the only ones hosting Mistral LLMs (under open-source or permissive proprietary licenses) in SecNumCloud-stamped environments. "We want to provide a portable, fully interoperable PaaS, regardless of the infrastructure provider," repeats the MagIT interviewee. "This obviously applies to Mistral AI's technology stack." But the crux of the matter remains access to chips capable of running the models and AI agents. At Outscale, Numspot can access instances equipped with Nvidia H200 (HGX), H100 and L40 GPUs. "We are in the process of securing access to B300 GPUs, which are increasingly widespread among French and European providers," assures Alexis Gendronneau. These more recent GPUs are recommended for hosting the latest generation of large language models. In addition, the manager notes that customers can already interconnect their IS with Numspot environments securely. As for the partnership between Mistral AI and Cloudera, Alexis Gendronneau assures that Numspot "views it rather favorably. The fact that major players are working together to provide isolation, dedicated and high-performance environments enables end customers to come out ahead. We are pursuing the same objective." For now, Numspot does not support Mistral Forge, which is not included in Mistral's on-premise portfolio. The LLM training service ideally requires clusters of several hundred GPUs, if not more. However, this Forge will serve TotalEnergies' needs. On September 15, the energy company announced that it will train AI models specific to oil exploration and reservoir engineering. Until then, Total had relied on fine-tuning.

IHC pursues 80% stake in Marlan Holding. Sun 13 Sep 2026 · AP News Abu Dhabi's International Holding Company is moving to acquire an 80 per cent stake in Marlan Holding, giving the investment group a controlling position in the company behind UAE-based Marlan Space. The proposed transaction is being carried out through IHC's wholly owned subsidiary International Tech Group SP LLC and remains subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions, the company said. Financial terms were not disclosed. Marlan Holding RSC Ltd is the holding company behind Marlan Space, an Abu Dhabi-based investor-operator focused on space and space-related businesses and technologies. Its portfolio spans space systems, autonomous operations and advanced computing, placing the planned acquisition within IHC's wider push into deep technology and the expanding commercial space economy. IHC said the deal would provide a platform for investment and growth across satellite infrastructure, advanced manufacturing and emerging space technologies. The group also expects potential collaboration between Marlan Space and other businesses across its portfolio in areas such as technology, data and infrastructure where satellite capabilities can support commercial applications. "This acquisition gives IHC a strategic position in the new space economy and provides Marlan Space with access to the Group's capital, capabilities and Dynamic Value Networks to accelerate its next phase of growth," IHC chief executive Syed Basar Shueb said in the company's announcement. He said space was becoming an increasingly important part of the global technology and infrastructure landscape, with applications extending across communications, Earth observation, data and artificial intelligence. A central asset within Marlan Space is Orbitworks, an Abu Dhabi-based private space infrastructure company established as a joint venture with US-based Loft Orbital. Orbitworks was formed to manufacture commercial satellites at scale and operates from a purpose-built facility in Khalifa Economic Zones Abu Dhabi. The facility is designed to support the production of Earth observation, communications and other spacecraft, together with specialised payloads, giving Marlan Space an operating presence in satellite manufacturing as well as investment exposure to the sector. Marlan Space's flagship Altair programme is an artificial intelligence-enabled Earth observation constellation combining optical, hyperspectral, thermal, infrared and passive radio-frequency payloads with onboard processing. IHC said the first satellite has been completed and further satellites are being assembled in Abu Dhabi. The system is intended to bring together multiple sensors and computing capability in orbit, allowing data to be processed closer to where it is collected and supporting faster delivery of information to users across commercial and public-sector applications. The acquisition announcement was followed a day later by plans involving Marlan Space, Loft Orbital, French artificial intelligence company Mistral AI and other partners to develop what the companies described as a large-scale artificial intelligence infrastructure in space. IHC said that programme would involve investment of up to $1 billion and would use a planned satellite constellation to run artificial intelligence models in orbit. The project, known as Altair-Next Gen, is intended to combine satellite infrastructure with onboard computing so data can be analysed in space rather than relying entirely on transmission to ground stations before processing. Initial applications identified by the companies include maritime awareness, wildfire detection, disaster response and protection of ports and critical infrastructure. Orbitworks is expected to manufacture satellites for the programme at its Abu Dhabi facility. The planned constellation is designed to scale from 10 satellites to 50, according to the companies, with the larger deployment intended to provide more continuous observation and faster alerts. Marlan Space chief executive Hamdullah Mohib said the company's strategy was based on moving more intelligence into orbit and building that capability from the UAE. He also serves as chief executive of Orbitworks. For IHC, the proposed majority purchase would add another technology-focused platform to a portfolio that spans more than 1,300 subsidiaries and investments across sectors including financial services, energy, property, healthcare and technology. Follow Arabian Post. 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