France’s Mistral AI SAS yesterday cemented its position as Europe’s top artificial intelligence (AI) hope against far larger US and Chinese competitors after a record fundraising round and a tie-up with chipmaking equipment heavyweight ASML Holding NV.
The 1.7 billion euro (US$2 billion) cash infusion values Mistral at 11.7 billion euros, double its heft last year, but a fraction of the US$183 billion price tag placed on US firm Anthropic PBC this month.
ASML, a key producer of the machines that churn out the chips powering AI models, was the lead investor, with a 1.3-billion-euro infusion that gives the Dutch company an 11 percent stake in Mistral.
Photo: AFP
Mistral has been touted as a European AI champion as technological sovereignty concerns fester between the EU and the US under President Donald Trump.
The deal “aims to generate clear benefits for ASML customers through innovative products and solutions enabled by AI,” ASML chief executive officer Christophe Fouquet said in a statement, pointing to “potential for joint research” in future.
Mistral chief executive Arthur Mensch said its AI could help ASML “solve current and future engineering challenges,” leading to benefits for semiconductor hardware and the AI software that runs on it.
ASML said it would gain a seat on Mistral’s strategic committee, giving the Dutch firm “an advisory role in Mistral AI’s future strategy and technology decisions.”
ASML chief financial officer Roger Dassen would assume this role.
Mistral’s fundraising comes after months of rumors that it could be the target of a takeover bid by Apple Inc, which has lagged other tech giants in developing its own AI.
However, the latest funding round “reaffirms the company’s independence,” Mistral said in its statement.
Other players in the latest investment round included chip giant Nvidia Corp, venture capital funds Index Ventures LLC, Andreessen Horowitz and French public investment bank Bpifrance.
Mensch co-founded Mistral in 2023 after working for Google’s DeepMind AI division, while fellow founders Guillaume Lample and Timothee Lacroix previously worked at Meta Platforms Inc’s AI lab.
The chief executive told the Wall Street Journal in June that Mistral was on course to generate US$100 million in annual revenue.
Mistral’s key products include Le Chat, a large language model chatbot competing with the likes of ChatGPT from the sector’s US heavyweight OpenAI.
As well as text, Mistral offers generative AI models capable of turning out images and computer code.
The company has opened offices in Paris, London, Luxembourg, New York, California’s Palo Alto and Singapore and expanded to more than 350 staff.
This year, Mistral has announced a slew of partnerships, including with Nvidia to create a cloud computing platform and with Saudi investment fund MGX to build an AI campus outside Paris.
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