Mistral AI raises €3 billion in response to doubts over its strategic direction

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• Artificial Intelligence Artificial Intelligence Artificial Intelligence

The French artificial intelligence start-up, accused by some experts of having abandoned the race against its American and Chinese rivals to focus on data centers and services, insists it has not given up on producing cutting-edge models. It has secured its largest-ever funding round and welcomed Samsung as a shareholder.

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Three billion euros. The figure announced on Tuesday, September 8, by Mistral AI is a record for a private fundraising round by a European technology company, the firm noted in a press release. For comparison, the French artificial intelligence start-up had previously raised "only" €2.7 billion since its creation in April 2023. Its valuation now rises to €21 billion, up from €11.7 billion at its previous fundraising round in September 2025. Among the new shareholders are two prestigious names: South Korean giant Samsung, which led this fundraising, and the Scale-up Europe fund, launched by the European Commission to foster the emergence of local AI champions.

This new injection of capital comes paradoxically at a time when, since summer 2026, doubts have been raised about the direction of the French start-up, often seen as one of Europe's main hopes to compete with American and Chinese AI giants. "Three years ago, Mistral embodied a simple promise: Europe would have its own leading laboratory, able to rival OpenAI and Anthropic. But today, the start-up sells computing power and hosts Chinese models," criticized Pierre-Louis Biojout, a tech entrepreneur based in San Francisco, California, in a blog post published on August 17.

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