Mistral AI raises €3 billion in record European funding round

Mistral AI has announced a €3 billion funding round, a move that values the French artificial intelligence company at over €21 billion. This transaction represents the largest private technology capital raise ever recorded in Europe.

The Series D round was led by Samsung Electronics, with the Scaleup Europe Fund managed by EQT and PSG Equity serving as co-leads. Other participating investors include Advent, funds managed by BlackRock, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Existing shareholders such as ASML, Bpifrance, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz also participated in the round.

Mistral AI plans to utilize the capital to increase computing capacity, strengthen research on cutting-edge models, develop infrastructure, and accelerate commercial expansion. The company currently works with more than 125 large enterprises across 20 countries. While management has projected annual recurring revenues of $1 billion by the end of the year, this remains an un-audited target.

Despite the record-breaking scale within Europe, analysts note that the funding still faces significant competition from the much larger capital ecosystems of American AI competitors.