French startup Mistral AI, the maker of the AI chatbot Le Chat and several large language models, has raised a €1.7 billion ($2 billion) Series C round led by Dutch semiconductor company ASML, pushing its valuation to €11.7 billion ($13.8 billion). The deal also includes a strategic partnership that will see ASML explore deploying Mistral’s AI models across its product portfolio.
The new valuation nearly doubles Mistral’s June 2024 $6 billion valuation, underscoring its position as Europe’s strongest rival to OpenAI. French president Emmanuel Macron even urged citizens earlier this year to “download Le Chat rather than ChatGPT,” highlighting the startup’s growing role in Europe’s AI sovereignty push.
Founded in 2023 by ex-Google DeepMind and Meta researchers, Mistral has released a mix of open source and proprietary AI models, ranging from Mistral Large 2 to Devstral, its Apache-licensed coding model, and Pixtral Large, a multimodal system. Its consumer app, Le Chat, has passed 1 million downloads and recently gained features like deep research mode, multilingual reasoning, image editing, and Memories.
Mistral has also struck key partnerships with Microsoft, AFP, Nvidia, Stellantis, IBM, and France’s army, and plans to launch Mistral Compute, a European Nvidia-powered AI platform, in 2026.
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CEO Arthur Mensch has dismissed acquisition rumors, including speculation around Apple, and said the company is building toward a future IPO. Still, scaling revenue beyond its current eight-digit range will be key to matching its fast-rising valuation.
