Mistral AI seeks 3 billion euros to fund its European AI push

French AI startup Mistral AI is negotiating a new funding round of around 3 billion euros at a valuation of approximately 20 billion euros. The talks with investors, reported by Bloomberg, are still in an early stage, and the valuation could rise depending on demand. In September, Mistral was valued at 11.7 billion euros, with chip manufacturer ASML becoming its largest shareholder with an 11 percent stake.

Mistral positions itself as a European alternative to US providers like OpenAI and Anthropic, though it lags significantly behind them in user numbers. The company recently introduced Mistral Medium 3.5, its latest flagship model that combines chat, reasoning, and programming capabilities in a single model. It also rebranded its chatbot from Le Chat to Vibe to focus more on autonomous workflows.

Mistral is building its business primarily on AI infrastructure for European governments and industrial customers like Airbus and BMW. To support this, the company operates its own cloud data centers in France and Sweden and recently secured an $830 million loan for a new data center near Paris.