Europe's leading artificial intelligence (AI) company Mistral secured 3 billion euros (about 4.7 trillion won) in investment led by Samsung Electronics. Based in Paris, France, Mistral is called the "OpenAI of Europe."
Mistral said on the 8th that it raised 3 billion euros through this Series D funding round. Its corporate value was assessed at more than 21 billion euros (about 33 trillion won) just three years after its founding. It is the largest equity investment secured by a European private technology corporation.
Samsung Electronics led the investment, with the Scaleup Europe Fund managed by Swedish investment firm EQT and existing investor PSG Equity participating as co-lead investors. Samsung Electronics' individual investment amount and secured equity were not disclosed.
Mistral is an AI startup founded in France in 2023. In a generative AI market led by U.S. corporations such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, it expanded by putting forward an "open-weight" model. Open-weight is a method of disclosing to the outside the weights, the core learning outputs of an AI model, allowing corporations or institutions to bring them into their own environments and modify and use them as needed.
It is also presenting "sovereign AI," in which corporations directly maintain control over data, models, computing infrastructure, and operating environments, as a key business strategy.
This investment by Samsung Electronics is seen as a move to broaden the intersection between AI technology and the semiconductor and manufacturing sectors. If Mistral expands its business beyond AI models to the computing infrastructure that runs them, demand for AI memory and semiconductors could also increase.
Following ASML of the Netherlands, which led the previous Series C round, Mistral has secured strong backing from global giants leading advanced manufacturing, engineering, and industrial technology by raising funds this time under the leadership of Samsung Electronics.
Mistral plans to use the funds secured this time to expand infrastructure such as cutting-edge AI research and development (R&D) and computing capabilities, develop products, and scale its global business. Mistral currently operates in 20 countries worldwide and counts more than 125 global corporations, including Airbus, ASML, and HSBC, as clients.
It is also preparing to enter the Korean market. Recently, Mistral began hiring staff in Seoul to handle enterprise AI services.
Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch said, "Through this funding, we will secure computing resources on a scale comparable to Chinese AI competitors," adding, "We will accelerate investment in R&D, products, and infrastructure, and continue to support corporations and institutions so they can operate AI at scale in environments tailored to them."