Mistral is rumored to be raising €3B at €20 valuation

The French AI firm Mistral AI is reportedly in the early stages of negotiating a substantial funding round, aiming to secure approximately €3 billion (around $3.5 billion), as indicated by Bloomberg's sources. If successful, this funding would elevate Mistral's valuation to about €20 billion (approximately $23.15 billion), nearly doubling its previous valuation of €11.7 billion achieved during a Series C funding round last September. Established in 2023, Mistral has quickly emerged as one of Europe’s foremost AI startups, with a mission to democratize access to advanced AI technologies. In a departure from its American counterparts, Mistral adopts a more open development strategy, providing foundational large language models with open weights. This allows users to customize the models according to their specific needs. The company also offers proprietary models designed for various applications, including programming assistance, voice cloning, and optical character recognition. As European nations increasingly distance themselves from American tech giants, Mistral is positioning itself as a local and more approachable alternative. The company is in the process of establishing a data center near Paris and has formed partnerships with France’s military, the Luxembourg government, and several prominent European enterprises. Despite its ambitious goals, Mistral has only raised around $4 billion to date, according to Pitchbook, which is significantly less than the funding amassed by U.S. competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic, which have raised $186 billion and $161.25 billion, respectively. This disparity in funding reflects the considerable head start American AI labs have in terms of revenue, model adoption, and demand from enterprises. Mistral has yet to respond to requests for further comment.