Why I use Mistral as my personal paid AI service

My choice of paid AI is probably strange to most … besides Gemini, which is assigned to me at work (meaning, work pays for it), I’m personally paying for … Mistral. Mistral is seen as Europe’s leading AI service alternative to US services. You’d think I’d go for Claude, and it IS tempting, as I do admire their workflows, and how they package their setup. (Skills, and Claude Code is quite a banger.) But Claude was a snooty bitch when I tried to sign up with my personal email (verification codes never came), and its token limits were annoying. And then, admittedly, I hate its leaderships’ constant sabre rattling against China, fear-mongering ways and callous disregard for humanity’s safety. Like all US-based AI companies, Anthropic is driven by greed, so the thought of supporting it financially annoyed me a little bit. So, I suppose being sniffed at by Claude was a good thing. To clarify, I didn’t choose Mistral because I have an anti-US-AI streak. I’m too pragmatic for that. I still…