Mistral raises €3bn at €21bn valuation in Europe's largest tech equity round

French AI company Mistral has raised €3bn at a valuation of over €21bn, the largest equity round by a private European tech firm, per Reuters. The round, led by Samsung, PSG Equity, and the EU-backed Scaleup Europe Fund, nearly doubles Mistral's valuation from a year ago. The funds will fuel R&D and infrastructure as Mistral positions itself as Europe's sovereign AI alternative to US giants.

Bottom line — Mistral's €21bn valuation and €3bn raise cement its role as Europe's primary AI contender against US rivals valued near $1tn.

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• Mistral's valuation has nearly doubled from €11.7bn in its Series C a year ago, per the Luxembourg Times.
• The round was co-led by Samsung Electronics, existing investor PSG Equity, and the European Commission's Scaleup Europe Fund, according to TNW.
• Mistral offers open-weight AI models that companies can run on their own servers, keeping data in-house, per Asharq Al-Awsat.
• CFO Johan Bergqvist told Reuters the company is on track for €860m ($1bn) in annual recurring revenue by year-end.
• The funding will support frontier research and infrastructure, including a data centre in France and another in Sweden, the Luxembourg Times reported.
• Mistral's customer base includes Airbus, ASML, BMW, and HSBC, and it operates across 20 countries, per TNW.
• CEO Arthur Mensch said the round lets Mistral 'move faster on R&D, products, infrastructure' for organisations to run AI on their own terms, as RTL Today noted.
• The US decision to limit foreign access to Anthropic's advanced models has reinforced Europe's push for AI sovereignty, per Reuters.

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