Mistral raises €3bn in record funding round to expand sovereign AI platform

French AI company Mistral has announced it has raised €3 billion in a Series D funding round, valuing the business at more than €21 billion.

The firm said it is the largest ever equity fundraising completed by a European technology company.

Samsung Electronics led the investment, alongside Scaleup Europe Fund and existing investor PSG Equity. The funding comes just three years after Mistral was founded and a year after it raised €1.7 billion in its Series C funding round.

The company said it will use the investment to expand its frontier AI research, increase compute capacity for training new models, grow its infrastructure and accelerate international expansion.

Mistral currently operates in 20 countries and supports more than 125 enterprise customers, including Airbus, ASML and HSBC.

The funding reflects growing demand from organisations looking to deploy AI while retaining control over their infrastructure, data and models, Mistral said.

The company added that governments and enterprises are increasingly prioritising sovereign AI as they seek to avoid dependence on a single technology provider.

Mistral positions itself as offering an alternative through its combination of open-weight AI models, infrastructure, compute capacity and enterprise products. It argues that its approach allows organisations to customise models, keep sensitive data within their own environments and retain control over AI systems deployed in production.

The investment also broadens Mistral’s international shareholder base. New investors include Advent, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

Existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), ASML, Bpifrance, DST Global, General Catalyst, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, NVIDIA and Salesforce Ventures also participated in the round.

Mistral said backing from industrial technology companies, including ASML in its previous funding round and Samsung Electronics in the latest raise, reflects confidence in its ability to deliver AI platforms for complex enterprise and industrial environments while supporting greater technological independence.