Issue 109 — 2026-09-09
Mistral AI: the French OpenAI competitor you should know about
Mistral AI is a Paris-based startup founded in 2023, and it's positioning itself as the real alternative to OpenAI's GPT models. The company has pulled in serious funding since it launched — enough to hire some of the best researchers in the field.
What makes Mistral different from the OpenAI playbook is that it releases a lot of its models as open source. You can run them on your own hardware, tinker with the weights, and build things on top without paying a per-token bill. That matters if you're a shop trying to keep costs down or a developer who wants to know exactly what's running under the hood.
The company's stated ambition is to put frontier AI in the hands of everyone, which is ambitious phrasing but the direction is right: open weights, open tools, less lock-in.
Why this matters for us: open source models mean we're not held hostage by one company's pricing or policies — we can run things locally, audit them, and keep our data on our own machines.
LookFresh: booking that fits how your shop works
La gente who books you through Instagram DMs, then argues about Venmo, then forgets to show up — it eats hours you'd rather spend cutting hair. Big booking platforms charge a cut of every appointment and make you fill out fields for chain salons, not for one chair, one book, one schedule.
LookFresh gives you a clean booking link that fits your workflow. Clients pick a time, pay in person or online, and the money moves through Stripe Connect straight to you. Flat platform fee, no per-appointment percentage. The shop keeps what it earns.
If you're a barber, a stylist, a mobile detailer — this is the tool that doesn't pretend you run a salon. Just a link, a schedule, payments that land in your pocket.
https://lookfresh.vip