Mistral AI chief executive Arthur Mensch attends an AI summit at Imperial College London in July. The company plans to open an office in Montreal, and Mr. Mensch said it is interviewing candidates.

French company Mistral AI is scouting for customers in Canada and plans to hire artificial intelligence scientists in Montreal, chief executive officer Arthur Mensch said on Monday.

Mistral builds large language models and competes with OpenAI, Anthropic and Toronto-based Cohere Inc. The company is already working with European customers operating in Canada, Mr. Mensch said, adding that the country’s manufacturing and logistics sectors are opportunities as well.

The Paris-based CEO is in Montreal this week for All In, a two-day AI conference that starts Wednesday. “We’ve been spending some

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