This. This is what we've been pitching for the last five years as the way France picks up the economic torch from Germany.
From Bloomberg, December 4:
- French AI startup is set to raise about €450 million in round
- Adviser Cedric O is among insiders set to sell partial stakes
Mistral AI is in the final stages of raising roughly €450 million ($487 million) from investors including Nvidia Corp. and Salesforce Inc. in a funding round that values the OpenAI rival at about $2 billion, according to people familiar with the deal.
The deal includes more than €325 million in equity from investors led by Andreessen Horowitz, which is in talks to invest €200 million in funding, the people said, asking not to be identified because the discussions are private. Nvidia and Salesforce agreed to contribute another €120 million in convertible debt, they said. Some of the details are in flux and may still change, the people said.
The startup’s three co-founders agreed to sell more than €1 million apiece in equity as part of the deal, according to documents detailing the transaction terms that Bloomberg reviewed. Three other Mistral insiders are set to offload shares, including Cedric O, the former French minister who acts as chief adviser for the company, and plans to sell nearly €1 million, according to the term sheet.
A spokesperson for Mistral declined to comment. Representatives for Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia and Salesforce declined to comment. O didn’t respond to requests for comment....
....MUCH MORE
On Mistral, June 14:
French Tech: "Mistral AI secures €105M in Europe’s largest-ever seed round"
Although we've been pitching French startups as a potential engine of growth to supplant German dominance, and although we've made Artificial Intelligence one of the foci of the blog since 2013 - "Why Is Machine Learning (CS 229) The Most Popular Course At Stanford" - and although we began juxtaposing the two strands five years ago, I'm still impressed with this sort of money going into a company that was formed in the last five weeks.
From The Next Web, June 14:
Leading VC says new generation of global players will emerge from European ecosystem
The artificial intelligence hype shows no sign of fading just yet, and investors are practically falling over themselves to fund the next big thing in AI. Yesterday, Paris-based startup Mistral AI announced it had secured €105mn in what is reportedly Europe’s largest-ever seed round.
Mistral AI was founded only four weeks ago, by a trio of AI researchers. Arthur Mensch, the company’s CEO, was formerly employed by Google’s DeepMind. His co-founders, Timothée Lacroix (CTO) and Guillaume Lample (Chief Science Officer), previously worked for Meta.
The company has yet to develop its first product. However, on a mission to “make AI useful,” it plans to launch a large language model (LLM) similar to the system behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT in early 2024.
A large part of the funds raised will be used towards renting the computer power to train it. The idea is to only use publicly available data to avoid the legal issues and copyright backlash faced by others in the industry....
....MUCH MORE
July 17:
"...Big Tech Alumni building AI startups in Paris"
On Cedric O:
November 7, 2021"France Fintech and Binance Announce Creation of EUR100 Million Crypto and Blockchain Initiative in France"
It was the mention of Cedric O* that caught my eye, he seems sharp although I don't know how much he and the government will back the venture.
From Business Insider:
France FinTech, a leading non-profit association whose mission is to promote FinTech excellence in France, and Binance, the world's leading blockchain ecosystem and cryptocurrency exchange, today announced the launch of a EUR100 Million initiative to support the development of the French and European blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Speaking at a conference today with Cédric O, Minister of State for the Digital Transition and Electronic Communication in France at the French Ministry of Finance in Paris, Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, founder and CEO of Binance announced the launch of the initiative, called "Objective Moon", that will comprise three key cryptocurrency and blockchain innovation projects in France.
The EUR100 million initiative, which will be funded by Binance, will see the development of a Binance Research and Development hub in France, along with the creation of a Decentralized Ledger Technology (DLT) accelerator and a new online Education Programme to develop blockchain and crypto industry talent in France. The education programme will be created in partnership with OpenClassroom and Ledger....
...MUCH MORE
*If interested see:
Q&A with M. Macron's New Digital Minister, Cédric O, on Tech in France
"Why French startups seem to focus on their home market & what’s changing"
Related:
June 18: "France makes high-profile push to be the A.I. hub of Europe setting up challenge to U.S., China"
June 11: "Report: France's Macron Seeks Seat at AI Table"
And back into the mists of time (well, the twenty-teens):
"French government officials advocate for a €500m investment in blockchain technology"
The
country might be better served adding to the €1.5 billion that
President Macron has pledged for research in Artificial Intelligence.
But I might be biased....Related:
France:
"For Emmanuel Macron, AI is more than a technological revolution. It is
a political revolution of hope in an increasingly dystopian future"
"The Race is On for European AI Research"
Profit From The Global Riot Control Industry
"The Top-10 French Artificial Intelligence Startups"
The Creator of the iPod and the iPhone Seeks to Dethrone Tech’s Giants
It’s
a crisp January morning in Paris’s 13th Arrondissement, and outside
Station F, the former freight terminal that is the epicenter of France’s
startup scene, twentysomethings climb out of cars hailed using iPhone
apps.
Tony Fadell’s Next Act? Taking on Silicon Valley—From Paris
I was about to headline this link "The 1600 AI Startups you must know" to play off the "672 thought leaders you must follow on Twitter" or the "37,000 young people who want to take your job" articles but then realized our wary-yet-intrigued readers are not the type of people who respond well to someone saying they 'must' do anything.
