Samsung Leads Record-Breaking €3 Billion Series D for France's Mistral AI, Pushing Valuation Past €21 Billion
Samsung Leads Record-Breaking €3 Billion Series D for France’s Mistral AI, Pushing Valuation Past €21 Billion #
French artificial intelligence company Mistral AI has closed a €3 billion ($3.58 billion) Series D funding round at a post-money valuation of more than €21 billion ($24.39 billion). The round is the largest equity fundraising by a European technology company on record, completed three years after the company was founded.
Samsung Electronics led the round, with the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund and existing backer PSG Equity as co-leads. New investors include Advent, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Returning shareholders including a16z, ASML, BNP Paribas CIB, Bpifrance, General Catalyst, NVIDIA, Salesforce Ventures, and Index Ventures also participated, according to Mistral’s announcement.
The valuation is roughly double the €11.7 billion figure Mistral achieved in 2025, following a €1.7 billion Series C led by Dutch chipmaker ASML. CEO Arthur Mensch said the capital will fund a build-out of data centres and compute infrastructure, capacity the company intends to use internally for model training and to rent to third parties. Mistral has committed €4 billion to data centre construction across France and Europe, with one facility operational outside Paris and a second under construction in Sweden.
The round is also intended to accelerate Mistral’s commercial expansion and international footprint. The company operates across 20 countries and counts more than 125 enterprises as customers for mission-critical AI deployments, including Airbus, ASML and HSBC. Mistral projects it will surpass €1 billion in annual recurring revenue before the end of 2026.
The fundraise has a political dimension. Mistral has positioned itself as a provider of sovereign, open-weight AI, an approach that has attracted European governments and enterprises concerned about dependence on US technology providers. According to TechCrunch, growing demand for sovereign AI infrastructure has boosted the company’s revenues. Mistral continues to work with American partners: Microsoft holds a strategic partnership and investment stake that the two companies expanded in July, and NVIDIA added to its exposure through this latest round.
Mistral’s €21 billion valuation is well below those of OpenAI and Anthropic. Samsung’s participation in the round also signals a move toward Asian technology markets. Mistral describes its broader approach as a third way: sovereign but globally connected.
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