Mistral raises $3.49b in round led by Samsung Electronics

French AI startup Mistral said Tuesday it raised 3 billion euros ($3.49 billion) in a new investment round led by Samsung Electronics.

Samsung Electronics led the round, with the EU-backed Scale-up Europe Fund, managed by private equity fund EQT, and PSG Equity also taking part, AFP and the Financial Times reported.

The 3 billion euros marks the largest amount ever raised by a European tech firm. The fresh capital pushed Mistral's valuation past 21 billion euros, roughly double the 12 billion euros the company was valued at a year earlier.

Founded in 2023, Mistral has been regarded as Europe's answer to the US and Chinese firms that dominate the global tech market. The system Mistral is currently developing is an open-weight model that allows companies to build AI within their own environments and modify the model as needed.

However, Mistral remains far smaller in scale than OpenAI, valued at $850 billion, or Anthropic, which is exploring an initial public offering at a $2 trillion valuation.

Mistral said the new funding would speed up its research and development efforts and support its global expansion. The company added it would pursue a niche-market strategy, offering companies models they can operate themselves using their own data.

Through the investment, Samsung Electronics built a strategic relationship with one of Europe's leading AI companies. The deal is expected to widen the customer base for its semiconductor business going forward.

Co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch said in a statement, "This round allows us to move faster on research and development, products and infrastructure, and to keep giving companies and institutions the ability to run AI in the way and at the scale they want."

Chief Financial Officer Johan Bergqvist told AFP regarding the funding round, "We have proven that we can build other models that are more cost-efficient than our competitors," adding, "Our capital needs are not as large as some of our competitors'."