Mistral raises $3.5B at $24B valuation led by Samsung

• Mistral raised €3 billion ($3.5 billion) in funding at a €21 billion valuation.
• Samsung Electronics and the EU-backed Scaleup Europe Fund are among the main investors.
• Mistral is betting on open-weight AI models to compete with players like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Arthur Mensch, founder of Mistral AI, during the 'Nvidia GTC' meeting at the 2025 VivaTech conference in Paris, France, on Wednesday, June 11, 2025. Nathan Laine | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Mistral announced on Tuesday that it had raised €3 billion ($3.5 billion) in fresh funding, led by memory chip giant Samsung, as the French startup positions itself as a European alternative to rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic.

The investment also involved the Scaleup Europe Fund — a European Union-backed investment fund managed by EQT — and existing investor PSG Equity. Mistral said the funding gives it a post-money valuation of more than €21 billion.

The company was valued at €11.7 billion a year ago, following a funding round led by Dutch chip equipment maker ASML.

Infrastructure and Growth Plans

Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral, told CNBC that the funding would go toward building more infrastructure, including its own data centers, and renting out 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.

The CEO added that the company will train "bigger and faster models."

The Paris-headquartered company develops AI models and is building out its own data center footprint. It is taking a different approach to OpenAI and Anthropic by working with individual companies to create custom AI tools tailored to their needs and integrated with their businesses.

Mistral integrates AI into the manufacturing process of Netherlands-based ASML. Mensch said Mistral would focus on a similar area with South Korea's Samsung.

Revenue Outlook

Mensch said earlier this year that he expects Mistral's annual recurring revenue to exceed $1 billion in 2026. With the new funding and partnerships, he said he expects "to be beating" that figure "if everything happens as they are trending." He declined to give a revised revenue figure.

"We're very confident that the fundraising we are doing today is also accelerating and enabling further growth down the line in 2027," Mensch told CNBC.

Chinese Open-Source Competition

Mistral has positioned itself as a non-U.S. and non-Chinese alternative in the AI industry, capitalizing on growing demand from Europe and other regions for "sovereign AI."

The Scaleup Europe Fund's investors include the European Commission as well as major corporations such as Novo Holdings and Santander.

Mistral is focusing on open-weight AI models, in contrast to the proprietary closed systems of OpenAI and Anthropic. However, it faces intense competition from highly capable Chinese players.

Mensch said models that Mistral will release "very soon" will be "very competitive."

He noted that Chinese AI labs are not actually operating or working with enterprise customers outside of China. Mistral said that in some cases, Chinese AI models can be deployed on Mistral's infrastructure, but this is "not creating a very strong dependency" on Chinese AI labs, as the data stays with Mistral.

Mensch said it is difficult for European companies to rely on long-term support for Chinese models, as it is unclear whether they will be upgraded over a longer period or if export restrictions will be placed on them.

"At this point in time, we are seeing that the volatility in this space is actually quite extreme," Mensch said.

"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," Mensch added.

Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.