French artificial intelligence startup Mistral has raised €3 billion ($3.5 billion) in fresh funding led by Samsung, lifting its valuation above €21 billion as it seeks to strengthen its position as a European alternative to US AI giants.
The funding round also included the Scaleup Europe Fund, a European Union-backed investment fund managed by EQT, and existing investor PSG Equity.
The latest investment represents a sharp increase from Mistral’s valuation of €11.7 billion a year ago, following a funding round led by Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASML.
Mistral Chief Executive Officer Arthur Mensch said that the new capital would be used to expand the company’s infrastructure, including building its own data centres and securing additional computing capacity.
“Long term, the plan is to fully rely on capacity that we are building ourselves, and so that means that the amount of compute that we own is going to grow … around 100% in the next five years,” Mensch said.
He added that the company plans to train “bigger and faster models” as it expands its computing capacity.
The Paris-headquartered company develops AI models and has been building its own data centre footprint as it seeks to distinguish itself from competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
Unlike those companies, Mistral has focused on working directly with businesses to develop customised AI tools that can be integrated into their operations.
The company already integrates AI into the manufacturing processes of ASML and plans to pursue a similar partnership approach with South Korean technology giant Samsung.
Mensch said earlier this year that he expected Mistral’s annual recurring revenue to exceed $1 billion in 2026.
Following the latest funding and new partnerships, he said the company expects “to be beating” that figure if current growth trends continue, although he declined to provide an updated revenue forecast.
“We’re very confident that the fundraising we are doing today is also accelerating and enabling further growth down the line in 2027,” Mensch said.
Mistral is also positioning itself as a non-US and non-Chinese player in the global AI industry, amid growing demand in Europe and elsewhere for what is known as “sovereign AI”.
The Scaleup Europe Fund, which participated in the funding round, counts the European Commission and major companies including Novo Holdings and Santander among its investors.
Mistral has also focused on open-weight AI models, contrasting with the proprietary systems developed by OpenAI and Anthropic.
However, the French startup faces growing competition from highly capable Chinese AI companies.
Mensch said models that Mistral plans to release “very soon” would be “very competitive”.
He argued that Chinese AI laboratories have limited operations and enterprise relationships outside China, adding that some Chinese models can be deployed on Mistral’s infrastructure without creating significant dependency because customer data remains with Mistral.
Mensch also questioned whether European businesses could rely on long-term support for Chinese AI models, citing uncertainty over future upgrades and possible export restrictions.
“At this point in time, we are seeing that the volatility in this space is actually quite extreme,” he said.
Mensch said Mistral needed to establish itself as a trusted long-term partner for customers by continuing to develop its own models.
“Now we also need to be a trusted partner for our customers, and they want us to be sure to certify that in one year from now they will get access to better models than they have access to today, and the only way we can provide that guarantee is by continuing to train our models ourselves,” he said.
Boluwatife Enome
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