French AI startup Mistral said Wednesday it will invest 1.2 billion euros ($1.43 billion) in digital infrastructure in Sweden, including an AI data center.
The announcement comes as Europe seeks to build technological sovereignty and rushes to build the infrastructure needed to power rapidly evolving AI tools amid heightened geopolitical tensions.
Mistral said the funding will facilitate the development of AI data centres, advanced computing power and localized AI capabilities.
Founded in 2023, Mistral has emerged as one of Europe’s leading AI companies, raising a €1.7 billion funding round in September at a valuation of €11.7 billion. Dutch chip equipment manufacturer ASML It contributed 1.3 billion euros to this round.
The company also includes tech giants. Nvidia and microsoft Investors include DST Global, Andreessen Horowitz, Bpifrance, General Catalyst, and Index Ventures.
“This investment is a concrete step towards building an independent AI-focused capability in Europe,” Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch said in a statement.
“We are strengthening Europe’s strategic autonomy and competitiveness by providing fully vertical services using locally processed and stored data,” he added. “This will lay the foundations for a European AI cloud that can serve industry, public authorities and researchers at scale.”
The company initially focused on building large-scale language models (LLMs), but has since expanded its services to the infrastructure needed to power AI.
The company launched Mistral Compute in June, which the company says can offer an integrated stack that includes services such as graphics processing units (GPUs), application programming interfaces (APIs), and a fully managed platform-as-a-service.
The Nordic countries are considered a prime location for European computing facilities, boasting cool temperatures and some of the lowest energy costs in the region.
OpenAI announced in July that it would launch an AI data center in Norway as part of its Stargate initiative.
As part of the investment, Mistral will partner with Swedish company EcoDataCenter to deploy AI computing “at scale,” marking the French startup’s first AI infrastructure investment outside its domestic market.
The facility is scheduled to open in 2027 and will support the development and operation of Mistral’s next-generation AI models.
Mistral has raised $2.9 billion, making it Europe’s most well-funded LLM builder, according to deal aggregation platform Dealroom, while lagging behind U.S. rivals with large private funding rounds.
OpenAI is closing on a funding round that could reach $100 billion, people told CNBC this week, and Anthropic signed a term sheet for a $10 billion funding round in January.
