Rain of money for Mistral

OpenAI rival from Paris raises 600 million euros

Mistral cooperates with Microsoft and Google, among others.

Mistral, the French artificial intelligence (AI) provider, announced on Tuesday that it had raised 600 million euros. This brings the total amount raised since the company was founded a year ago to more than one billion euros.

According to the Financial Times, the company's valuation has now reached almost six billion euros. At the previous financing round in December 2023, it was still at two billion euros.

"Financing round guarantees independence"
"The current financing round guarantees the continued independence of the company, which remains fully under the control of the founders," said co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch. The money will be used to drive forward the development of the "Mixtral 8x7B" AI. Alongside Aleph Alpha from Germany, Mistral is regarded as a promising European provider of so-called generative AI, which is set to compete with ChatGPT or Google's "Gemini".

Current backers reportedly include venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz, the investment division of the Bertelsmann publishing house, chip manufacturer Nvidia and SAP rivals Cisco and ServiceNow.

A few months ago, the French company announced a partnership with Microsoft, which also works closely with chat GPT developer and Mistral rival OpenAI. This deal is being scrutinized by the European Union (EU). Mistral is also cooperating with Alphabet subsidiary Google.