French AI darling Mistral is reportedly set to close a €2bn funding round at a €12bn valuation, according to Bloomberg.
Two sources confirmed to Sifted the fundraise will value the company at €11.6bn post-money.
The Paris-based company, which builds foundational AI models and pitches itself as a European competitor to Big Tech players like OpenAI, is therefore set to more than double its valuation since its last funding round, a €600m Series B raised last year at a €5.8bn valuation.
It means in just over two years since launching, Mistral will become one of the most valuable private tech companies in Europe.
Previous reports suggested the company was seeking funds from several investors including Abu Dhabi fund MGX. Sifted understands, however, that the round will not be led by a Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund but by a strategic investor.
Mistral did not reply to a request for comment.
A European champion
Mistral, which was cofounded in 2023 by DeepMind and Meta alumni, is considered Europe’s best chance at competing in the AI race. Backed by high-profile global investors including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst and Lightspeed Venture Partners, the startup develops open source AI models, targeting enterprises with a strong focus on preserving privacy, control and sovereignty.
Over the past year the company has expanded into AI infrastructure, announcing in February plans to “invest several billions of euros” to build its own data centre. A few months later, Mistral unveiled a joint venture with MGX, French public bank Bpifrance and Nvidia to develop an AI campus in France representing 1.4 gigawatt of compute power.
Earlier this year the startup also announced Mistral Compute, an infrastructure platform it is developing in partnership with Nvidia to provide cloud services to customers.
There have been reports, meanwhile, that Mistral could be the target of an acquisition by Apple — an operation pitched to help the US tech giant get up to speed in the AI race, where it is falling behind competitors like Meta, Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch, however, has repeatedly said the company is not for sale.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/mistral-fundraise-12-bn-valuation/
