This was the most in-depth article on the chip venture that we saw. We'll go to Bloomberg for the large-by-large financing.
From Korea's Edaily, September 9:
- Strategic Partnership Signed Suddenly to Coincide with South Korea-France Summit
- DS Data and Mistral Raji Join Forces… to Build Enhanced Security
- "Setting a New Standard for Semiconductor Innovation… Contributing to the Global Value System"
[Edaily Reporter Han Kwangbeom ] SamsungElectronics(005930)Samsung Electronics has led a 3 billion euro (approximately 4.7 trillion won) Series D funding round for the French artificial intelligence (AI) company Mistral AI and signed a long-term technology partnership. Through this, the company has significantly expanded its influence in the global AI ecosystem.
SamsungElectronics announced on the 9th that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Mistral AI and agreed to jointly develop “semiconductor-specific AI” that combines the technology and manufacturing data from its DS (Semiconductor) Division with Mistral AI’s high-efficiency AI model technology to enhance productivity and precision across the entire semiconductor operations. SamsungElectronics plans to use this partnership as an opportunity to accelerate the AI transformation across all business divisions, including semiconductors, and strengthen its competitiveness in the global AI semiconductor market.
The signing of this partnership was timed to coincide with the South Korea-France summit. Previously, Mistral AI had officially announced a 3 billion euro investment round led by SamsungElectronics, with EQT’s Scale-Up Europe Fund and PSG Equity serving as co-leads. New investors in this round included BlackRock, Advent, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, while major existing shareholders—such as NVIDIA, ASML, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Salesforce Ventures—also participated in significant reinvestments.
SamsungElectronics’ investment marks the largest equity investment in the history of European tech companies, and Mistral AI has achieved a valuation of over 21 billion euros (approximately 33 trillion won) just three years after its founding. Mistral AI stated, “This investment is a significant milestone achieved under SamsungElectronics’ leadership,” adding, “The funds raised will be used to strengthen our infrastructure and product capabilities and accelerate large-scale deployment; above all, they will serve as a driving force to continue and expand our frontier research and AI model development.”
◇Mistral: Europe’s Leader in “Sovereign AI”… Unparalleled Influence in Technological Sovereignty and the Ecosystem
Mistral AI, a leading player in the European AI ecosystem, was founded by AI researchers from Google DeepMind and Meta, led by CEO Arthur Mensch. Mistral AI possesses unparalleled technical capabilities to build customized AI models in on-premises environments for industries requiring a high level of data security, such as finance, manufacturing, and energy....
And from Bloomberg, September 7:
Mistral AI Boosts Valuation to €21 Billion in Samsung-Led Round
Mistral AI has raised €3 billion ($3.5 billion) at a valuation of more than €21 billion from investors led by Samsung Electronics Co. to fund the development of artificial intelligence models and build computing infrastructure.
The EU’s Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity co-led the round, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. The Paris-based startup has nearly doubled its €11.7 billion valuation from its last fundraising round a year ago.
The funding will give Mistral the ammunition to advance in industrial AI, which involves rolling out the tech for manufacturing processes and is emerging as one of the company’s key differentiators, Chief Executive Officer Arthur Mensch said in an interview. While Mistral is a fraction of the size of generative AI behemoths such as OpenAI and Anthropic PBC, the company has been selling itself as a sovereign alternative for Europe. It’s struck deals with large European industrial companies including Airbus SE, BMW AG and Dutch chip-machine maker ASML Holding NV, which led Mistral’s previous round.
“This fundraising is also a way for us to further expand in the US, in Asia and of course to double down on what we’ve been doing in Europe,” Mensch said. “This is a technology that requires significant infrastructure.”
That involves owning “significant assets” such as data centers, he added. Earlier this year, Mistral raised $830 million in debt for a data center project outside Paris that would use Nvidia Corp. chips. The company committed a further €1.2 billion to a data center buildout in Sweden, its first data center investment outside France.
Similar to the ASML partnership, the agreement with Samsung “opens the door for further collaboration,” Mensch said. ASML, which participated in this most recent funding round, invested €1.3 billion for an 11% stake last year. ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet said at the time he planned to “flood the entire organization” with AI.
Mistral was founded in 2023 by Mensch, an alumnus of Google’s DeepMind, and ex-Meta Platforms Inc. researchers Timothée Lacroix and Guillaume Lample. It develops open-source large language models, in contrast to the “closed” models developed by its larger American counterparts. Mensch has touted open source as more cost efficient and easier to integrate into large, complex corporate systems.
Mensch is counting on gaining traction with European governments, fearful of relying too heavily on artificial intelligence products owned by American and Chinese companies. US President Donald Trump’s administration compounded these fears this summer, when it ordered Anthropic to disable access to its most advanced AI models for all foreign nationals, citing national security concerns....
....MUCH MORE
Most recently on Mistral:
July 21 - "Microsoft Deepens Ties With Mistral, Targeting Europe and Enterprise AI"
When your company (Mistral) is not just the national standard-bearer but the flagship for the whole continent it's amazing how many companies come knocking on your door....
***
....It's also another sign of how MSFT is distancing itself from OpenAI. Another couple years and Mr. Nadella will be saying "Sam who?"
If interested, quite a few of our Mistral links are in July 17's "Airbus migrating 70 critical apps from AWS to France's Scaleway amid digital sovereignty push".
And a couple I forgot to include:
"Why Paris may be the most important AI city outside Silicon Valley"
Though this is an infomercial for one of TechCrunch's products it also happens to be true, though Shenzhen could probably make a claim to that moniker as well....
FrenchTech: "Mistral launches Industrial Engineering AI with Airbus, BMW and EDF as headline customers" (plus rebutting the Pope)
And a couple more from the hazy depths of time gone by (2024):
FrenchTech: "Mistral AI, Europe’s OpenAI rival, adds top LLM to Amazon Bedrock"
FrenchTech: Mistral AI Is Cutting Deals Right and Left
Some adroit, some gauche....
I am so sorry.
And many, many more, going back to:
June 2023 - French Tech: "Mistral AI secures €105M in Europe’s largest-ever seed round"
