French artificial intelligence (AI) startup Mistral is reportedly seeking to raise a new 3 billion euros (about 5.2 trillion won).
According to Bloomberg and others on the 15th (local time), Mistral is pursuing a 3 billion-euro funding round, which, if completed, would value Mistral at about 20 billion euros (about 35 trillion won).
Mistral, which received a 1.3 billion-euro investment from semiconductor equipment maker ASML in September last year and was valued at 11.7 billion euros (about 20.5 trillion won), would see its valuation roughly double in 10 months if the new funding goes through.
Mistral is an AI startup founded in 2023 by researchers from Google DeepMind and Meta. Aiming to be an AI infrastructure provider for European governments and corporations, it is building and operating cloud computing facilities in France and Sweden.
Its business is growing rapidly. Mistral logged about $400 million (about 600 billion won) in revenue last year and is aiming for $1 billion (about 1.5 trillion won) this year. It is particularly targeting engineering and manufacturing as key markets and is expanding into industrial AI by forging partnerships with Airbus, BMW and others.
However, the total amount Mistral has raised so far, including liability, is only about 6.5 billion euros (about 11.4 trillion won). That is still small compared with rivals OpenAI ($186 billion; about 280 trillion won) and Anthropic ($161.2 billion; about 243 trillion won).
Meanwhile, Mistral is reportedly in talks with Europe's financial sector to develop AI models specialized for cybersecurity. This is seen as a response strategy targeting European banks that cannot access Anthropic's AI model "Mythos."