Mistral AI, one of the major players in the European AI sector, is reportedly engaged in negotiations to raise up to $1bn in equity funding.
Potential investors include Abu Dhabi’s sovereign technology investor, MGX. According to a report by Bloomberg, these discussions are in preliminary stages and have not yet defined a valuation for Mistral should the financing materialise.
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The Paris-based AI startup is also seeking substantial debt financing from French banks, including Bpifrance, which is an existing stakeholder.
Founded in France in 2023, Mistral focuses on developing open-source large language models (LLMs) and is currently claimed to be Europe’s largest AI startup. It has amassed over €1bn ($1.17bn) in investment to date, achieving a €5.8bn ($6.79bn) valuation after last year’s fundraising round.
In its latest Series B round concluded in June 2024, Mistral raked in €600m ($643m) in funding.
Mistral was co-founded by Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix. The company categorises its LLMs into general purpose, specialist, and research models.
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By GlobalDataThese models often use an open-weight structure under an Apache 2.0 license and are accessible across common machine learning platforms, though top-tier models sometimes carry commercial restrictions.
Mistral adopts distinct naming conventions for its models, such as ‘Mistral 7B’ which highlight parameter counts or terms like ‘Mistral Large.’ Some updates lead to changes in model names, as demonstrated when ‘Mistral Large’ transitioned to ‘Mistral Large 2’.
The company’s Le Chat platform functions as a beta version chatbot, which was released in February.
Le Chat competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms by leveraging intelligent conversation interfaces. It incorporates various models including the advanced multimodal Pixtral 12B.
In May 2025, Mistral formed a joint venture with MGX and Nvidia with an aim to create what is projected to be Europe’s most extensive AI data centre near Paris.
In June 2025, Mistral and oil and gas major TotalEnergies formed a partnership to establish an innovation lab designed to explore digital energy production solutions that transition towards low-carbon technologies.
