Mistral Hits €21B Valuation as Samsung Leads €3B Sovereign AI Push

Mistral secured €3B ($3.5B) in new funding led by Samsung, alongside the EU-backed Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity. The round pushes the French startup's valuation past €21B, up sharply from the €11.7B valuation it held a year ago following an ASML-led round. The company plans to double its owned compute capacity over the next 5 years to build out a proprietary data center footprint. Mistral's annual recurring revenue is now pacing to exceed its previously stated $1B target for the year. "Long term, the plan is to fully rely on capacity that we are building ourselves, and so that means that the amount of compute that we own is going to grow ... around 100% in the next five years." — Arthur Mensch