Mistral AI founder Arthur Mensch during the “Nvidia GTC” meeting at the 2025 VivaTech conference on Wednesday, June 11, 2025 in Paris, France.
Nathan Lane | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Mistral announced Tuesday that it has raised 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) in new funding led by memory chip giant Samsung, as the French startup seeks to position itself as a European alternative to rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
The investment also saw participation from ScaleUp Europe Fund, a European Union-backed investment fund managed by EQT, and existing investor PSG Equity. Mistral said the funding would bring the company’s post-money valuation to more than 21 billion euros.
A funding round led by the Dutch chip equipment maker valued Mistral at €11.7 billion a year ago ASML.
Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch told CNBC in an interview that the funding will be used to build out more infrastructure, including its own data centers, and rent computing power.
“Longer term, our plan is to rely entirely on the capacity that we’re building ourselves, which means the amount of compute we have will grow by about 100% over the next five years,” Mensch said.
The CEO added that the company will train “bigger, faster models.”
The Paris-based company develops AI models and builds its own data center footprint. The company is taking a different approach to OpenAI and Anthropic by working with individual companies to create custom AI tools tailored to their needs and integrating them into their businesses.
Mistral is integrating AI into Netherlands-based ASML’s manufacturing processes. Mensch said Mistral will focus on areas similar to South Korea’s Samsung.
Mensch said earlier this year that he expects Mistral’s annual recurring revenue to exceed $1 billion this year. With new funding and partnerships, Mensch said he expects to “exceed” that number “if everything goes according to trends.” He did not disclose the revised income amount.
“We’re very confident that our current funding will accelerate and enable us to grow even further in 2027,” Mensch told CNBC.
China’s open source competition
Mistral is trying to capitalize on the growing desire for “sovereign AI” in Europe and elsewhere to promote itself as a non-US, non-Chinese alternative in the AI industry.
Investors in the Scale-Up Europe Fund include the European Commission as well as major companies such as Novo Holdings and Santander.
Mistral also focuses on open-weight AI models compared to OpenAI and Anthropic’s proprietary closed systems. However, they face fierce competition from highly capable Chinese players.
Mensch said the models that will be released “soon” from Mistral are “very competitive.”
He pointed out that China’s AI research institutes do not actually operate outside of China or work with corporate customers. Mistral said that in some cases Chinese AI models could be deployed on Mistral’s infrastructure, but because the data would remain in Mistral, “there would not be a very strong dependency” on China’s AI institute.
Mensch said it is difficult for European companies to rely on long-term support for the Chinese model, as it is unclear whether the model will be upgraded over time or whether export restrictions will be imposed.
“We can see that the volatility in this area is actually quite extreme at this point,” Mensch said.
“Right now, we also need to be a trusted partner for our customers. They want us to guarantee that in a year’s time they will have access to a better model than what they have access to today. The only way we can provide that guarantee is if we continue to train the models ourselves,” Mensch said.
