Singapore’s Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) and France’s Mistral have expanded their collaboration in two areas of artificial intelligence: AI agents designed to reason and carry out complex tasks, and AI-powered autonomous navigation for drones.
The agreements build on efforts announced in 2025 and are positioned as the next phase of joint research into AI systems intended to plan, reason and operate in complex, dynamic and mission-critical defence environments.
One area of collaboration will focus on developing AI agents, described as autonomous systems that can move beyond generating responses to reasoning through problems, formulating plans and executing multi-step workflows using digital tools. DSTA and Mistral said they will jointly research techniques for building reliable AI agents, alongside methods to evaluate, monitor and govern such systems.
The partnership will also explore the development and fine-tuning of vision-language models for autonomous drone navigation. The organisations said combining visual understanding with natural language instructions could help drones interpret surroundings and navigate dynamic environments with greater adaptability and contextual awareness.
Chief Executive of DSTA, Mr Ng Chad-Son, said: “Agentic AI – systems that can reason, plan and act reliably in complex settings – will be a key focus for us. Through this collaboration with Mistral, we are advancing agentic AI and vision-language models to develop trustworthy and deployable autonomous systems, while strengthening Singapore’s long-term capabilities in this critical domain.”
Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Mistral, Mr Timothée Lacroix, said, “We are proud to deepen our partnership with DSTA and further support its critical operations. Together, we will deploy Mistral’s fully integrated AI stack to accelerate innovation, contribute to developing bespoke AI agents and improve autonomous drone navigation.”
