Mistral raises €3 billion as Samsung leads record European AI round

Europe's largest-ever technology equity round has landed at Mistral AI, with Samsung Electronics and an EU-backed fund leading a €3 billion investment that values the French startup above €21 billion.

"We believe that the combination of ambition and execution puts Mistral in a strong position to shape the next era of AI," Kirk Lepke, partner at EQT and the Scaleup Europe Fund, said.

The round nearly doubles Mistral's valuation from €11.7 billion after its Series C last year, led by Dutch chip equipment maker ASML. New investors include funds managed by BlackRock, while existing backers ASML and Nvidia increased their participation. PSG Equity co-led alongside Samsung and the Scaleup Europe Fund.

The raise makes Mistral Europe's second-highest-valued private technology group and its fastest-growing company, CFO Johan Bergqvist told Reuters. It remains far smaller than US rivals — Anthropic carries a $965 billion valuation and OpenAI $852 billion, with both planning public listings this year. Bergqvist said any Mistral IPO was "always of course an optionality for us going forward" but that timing was "still up in the air."

Owned compute to double over five years

CEO Arthur Mensch said the fresh capital will fund owned data center infrastructure, with compute capacity expected to roughly double over five years as Mistral shifts from renting third-party capacity. "Long term, the plan is to fully rely on capacity that we are building ourselves," Mensch told CNBC. The company will train "bigger and faster models" on that infrastructure.

Mistral operates in 20 countries and supports more than 125 enterprises in AI transformation projects. In Singapore, where it opened an office in January 2025, the company plans to triple headcount as it expands across Southeast Asia.

Sovereign AI bet draws EU backing

Unlike OpenAI and Anthropic, which sell proprietary closed systems, Mistral distributes open-weight models that customers can download and customize on their own servers. The company integrates AI directly into manufacturing processes at ASML and expects to pursue similar work with Samsung in South Korea.

The Scaleup Europe Fund counts the European Commission, Novo Holdings, and Santander among its investors, reflecting a policy push for technological sovereignty in AI. That urgency sharpened in June when the US limited foreign access to two advanced Anthropic models, Bergqvist said. "The fact that the EU or Europe have to have their own kind of AI provider in the game is important," he said.

Mistral also faces competition from Chinese open-source developers. Mensch acknowledged Chinese models can in some cases be deployed on Mistral's infrastructure but argued this does not create "a very strong dependency" because customer data remains with Mistral. He said European enterprises cannot rely on long-term support for Chinese models given uncertainty over upgrade roadmaps and potential export restrictions. "We are seeing that the volatility in this space is actually quite extreme," Mensch said.

Mensch said earlier this year that Mistral's annual recurring revenue would exceed $1 billion in 2026. With the new funding and partnerships, he expects "to be beating" that figure "if everything happens as they are trending," though he declined to provide a revised estimate. "We're very confident that the fundraising we are doing today is also accelerating and enabling further growth down the line in 2027," he said.

Microsoft, which agreed in July to spend billions of dollars on Mistral's computing infrastructure in Europe, did not participate in the funding round, Bergqvist said.

For Samsung, the investment extends a strategic push into AI infrastructure that aligns with its memory chip dominance. For Europe, the round marks a milestone in its effort to cultivate technology champions capable of competing with US and Chinese incumbents on both capital and capability. Mistral's pitch to customers hinges on being a trusted, neutral alternative — one that can guarantee model improvements over time. "The only way we can provide that guarantee is by continuing to train our models ourselves," Mensch said.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.