Mistral bags €3B to build Europe's sovereign AI champion
Samsung-led round values the French model maker at more than €21B
Paris-based AI startup Mistral has secured €3 billion in Series D funding, bringing its post-money valuation to over €21 billion. This makes Mistral the largest European technology company to complete an equity fundraising round, surpassing even OpenAI. Mistral positions itself as a sovereign alternative to US tech giants like OpenAI and Anthropic.
The company aims to help organizations and governments harness AI for mission-critical needs while retaining control over the infrastructure and intelligence loop. Mistral's approach includes open-weight models, infrastructure, and compute capacity. The funding round, led by Samsung Electronics, the EU-backed Scaleup Europe Fund, and existing investors PSG Equity, includes Airbus among its customers.
Despite its impressive growth, with a €1.7 billion Series C round in 2021 and a €11.7 billion valuation, Mistral remains smaller than OpenAI in global AI funding. However, Europe's current reliance on overseas technology has fueled Mistral's success, as evidenced by the recent export restrictions on Anthropic, which added to European jitters.
Mistral remains committed to combining sovereign intelligence with deployment and adaptation in European environments, despite participating in the AI investment cycle through its investment from Nvidia.
Written by urgent.news from The Register's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
