The Lights Went Out During Mistral CEO and Mozilla President\'s Talk at RAISE Summit

During the Paris RAISE Summit, in the middle of a public discussion about the reliability of open AI, the lights went out for Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch and Mozilla President Mark Surman right on the main stage (Master Stage).

What Happened on Stage

Mensch and Surman were discussing why open source makes AI systems more reliable when the power suddenly cut out on the Master Stage in the middle of their conversation. They had to finish the discussion almost in the dark, without light and apparently without the standard stage sound system.

• Location — RAISE Summit, main stage (Master Stage) in Paris
• Discussion participants — Arthur Mensch, CEO and co-founder of Mistral, and Mark Surman, President of Mozilla
• Discussion topic — reliability of open AI
• Power outage occurred right in the middle of the discussion, and speakers had to finish it in the dark

Who Are the Speakers of the Discussion

Mistral is a French AI developer and one of Europe's most prominent supporters of open model weights: the company regularly releases open language models alongside commercial products and positions itself as an alternative to closed American AI labs. Mozilla is a non-profit organization that has spent decades advocating for open source code in software, from the Firefox browser to its current open AI initiatives. This is precisely why RAISE Summit organizers brought these two speakers together in one discussion: both speak the same language when it comes to transparency and openness of technology.

Why This Looked Symbolic

The speakers were just proving to the audience that open AI is more reliable than closed alternatives when the conference infrastructure itself failed before their eyes —a coincidence the hall could not help but appreciate. Formally, the power outage at the conference center has nothing to do with the reliability of AI models, but from the standpoint of spectacle, the moment was almost staged: a discussion about the fragility of closed systems was interrupted by the fragility of an ordinary power grid. Neither Mensch nor Surman stopped the discussion — both continued their exchange already without light on stage, finishing the discussion in the dark before the audience.

What Happened Next at the Conference

The discussion featuring the heads of Mistral and Mozilla took place on the main stage of RAISE Summit — a major Paris conference on AI where other tech company leaders also spoke that day. Based on the description, the power outage affected this particular discussion on the Master Stage, not the entire event as a whole.

What This Means

The incident has no direct relation to technology as such, but became a vivid, if accidental, illustration of the fact that debates about AI system reliability are taking place against a background of far more mundane failures — down to a simple power outage in the middle of a specialized conference. For an industry discussing data center failover and model reliability, the moment served as a reminder that basic infrastructure remains vulnerable even at a venue bringing together leaders of open-source AI.