French AI startup Mistral has raised €3 billion at a valuation of around €21 billion ($24 billion), in what the company says is the largest equity funding round by a privately owned European technology firm, according to a recent report by Reuters.
The round was jointly led by existing investor PSG Equity, alongside South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and the EU-backed Scaleup Europe Fund, both of which invested in Mistral for the first time, states the report.
Mistral’s Chief financial officer Johan Bergqvist told Reuters the fundraising makes Mistral Europe’s second-highest-valued private tech group. He said the funds will be used to power the company’s models and invest in frontier research as it seeks to compete with larger rivals.
Mistral is widely considered Europe’s strongest candidate to develop a leading AI company, though it remains far smaller than US competitors, says Reuters. Anthropic is valued at $965 billion, nearly 40 times more, while OpenAI is valued at $852 billion. Both are planning public listings this year.
Bergqvist said to Reuters that an IPO was “always of course an optionality for us going forward,” but timing was “still up in the air.” He added: “We don’t have any ongoing discussions around that at the moment.”
The fundraising also highlights growing concerns in Europe over technological sovereignty. Bergqvist said it was important for Europe to have its own AI provider, without directly referencing Anthropic, which was subject to US export restrictions in June.
Mistral develops open models that allow its more than 125 customers to download and customise systems on their own servers, the report further states. The company is on track for $1 billion in annual recurring revenue by the end of the year, with growth particularly strong in Asia and North America, Bergqvist said.
Microsoft, which agreed in July to spend billions on Mistral’s computing infrastructure in Europe, did not participate in the funding round.