French startup Mistral AI has closed a Series D funding round of 3 billion euros, bringing its valuation to 21 billion euros. This operation represents the largest equity fundraising ever achieved by a private European technology company. Founded in 2023 by Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample and Timothée Lacroix, the company’s valuation has tripled compared to its previous 6 billion euro valuation reached in June 2024. With this financial windfall, Mistral aims to stay in the race for frontier artificial intelligence models and deploy AI extensively across Europe, a sovereignty positioning illustrated by its partnership with BNP Paribas. Despite this continental record, the gap remains considerable with American giants OpenAI and Anthropic, each valued at nearly 1 trillion dollars.
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