Would You like a feature Interview?
All Interviews are 100% FREE of Charge
Arthur Mensch, French founder of artificial intelligence startup Mistral AI, attends the Viva Technology Show at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France on May 22, 2024.
Chessnot | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
As billions of yen are pouring into the artificial intelligence (AI) race, French tech startup Mistral AI has raised a 600 million euro ($645 million) funding round.
The funding round, which the company announced on Tuesday, values Mistral AI at 5.8 billion euros (about $6.2 billion), a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly told CNBC.
Mistral AI didn’t offer many details about this round, but Financial Times Venture capital firm General Catalyst reportedly led the round, which also included participation from existing investors.
The French startup is just over a year old, but has raised a huge amount of funding and is trying to take on OpenAI to become the European AI champion. Mistral AI is building so-called large language models (LLMs), which are the basis for applications such as chatbots, popularized by ChatGPT.
Such an effort would be expensive and would require huge investments in infrastructure. NVIDIAof semiconductors.
Mistral’s seed round – a term for very early investment in a company – had raised €105 million in funding alone when the company announced it last year.
Mistral co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch has become something of a rock star in the European tech world. Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
But these big companies are also looking to partner with these startups: In February, Microsoft announced an investment in Mistral.
Speaking on social platform X, Mensch thanked the company’s new and existing investors for their “continued trust and support in our global expansion.”
“This will accelerate our roadmap to continue putting cutting-edge AI in the hands of everyone,” he added.