Mistral AI said Tuesday it raised €3 billion ($3.5 billion) in a Series D that values the Paris company at more than €21 billion post-money, CNBC and Bloomberg reported. Samsung Electronics led the round. The EU-backed Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT, and existing investor PSG Equity co-led, according to the company statement carried by both outlets.
The raise nearly doubles Mistral’s €11.7 billion valuation from its ASML-led round a year ago. Mistral’s own post called the Series D the largest equity fundraising round ever completed by a European technology company. New investors include Advent, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, with returning backers including Andreessen Horowitz, ASML, and Nvidia, per the company and secondary coverage.
CEO Arthur Mensch told CNBC the capital will fund more infrastructure, including Mistral’s own data centers, plus rented compute while owned capacity ramps. Longer term, he said, Mistral aims to rely fully on capacity it builds, with owned compute set to grow about 100% over five years, and to train “bigger and faster models.”
Mensch framed the company as a non-U.S., non-Chinese alternative for buyers chasing “sovereign AI,” leaning on open-weight models and custom enterprise work such as its ASML manufacturing integration. He said a similar industrial push with Samsung is in view. He also repeated an earlier forecast that annual recurring revenue would top $1 billion this year and said the new round should help beat that path if trends hold, without giving a revised figure.
Chinese open-weight labs remain the competitive foil. Mensch told CNBC that Mistral models due “very soon” will be very competitive, and argued European customers want a partner that will keep shipping upgrades rather than depend on Chinese labs whose long-term support and export rules are uncertain.
This is a European capital and infrastructure story, not a model launch day.