Mistral AI, the French firm that develops the AI chatbot, Le Chat, and several other foundational giant language fashions, is taken into account one in all France’s most promising tech startups, and is arguably the one European firm that would compete with OpenAI.

“Go and obtain Le Chat, which is made by Mistral, quite than ChatGPT by OpenAI — or one thing else,” French president Emmanuel Macron stated in a TV interview forward of the AI Motion Summit in Paris in February 2025.

In a big step up from its June 2024 valuation of $6 billion, Mistral is now valued at €11.7 billion (roughly $13.8 billion) following a Sequence C funding spherical led by Dutch semiconductor firm ASML, which invested €1.3 billion (roughly $1.5 billion) in September, alongside signing a brand new strategic partnership with the AI firm.

ASML’s curiosity in having its shoppers profit from its collaboration is a crucial milestone for Mistral. Whereas the French firm describes itself as “the world’s greenest and main unbiased AI lab,” it’s nonetheless not as effectively often called its greatest rivals.  

What’s Mistral AI?

Mistral AI, which affords some open-source AI fashions, has raised important funding since its creation in 2023, with the ambition to “put frontier AI within the arms of everybody.” Whereas this isn’t a direct jab at OpenAI, the slogan is supposed to spotlight the corporate’s openness versus OpenAI’s more moderen, closed-source take at creating AI fashions.

Mistral’s chatbot Le Chat is accessible on iOS and Android, reaching 1 million downloads within the two weeks following its cellular launch and grabbing France’s prime spot free of charge downloads on the iOS App Retailer.

In July 2025, Mistral AI up to date Le Chat with new options that carry it nearer to rival full-stack AI chatbots: a brand new “deep analysis” mode, native multilingual reasoning, and superior picture enhancing. This replace additionally added Tasks, which lets customers group chats, paperwork, and concepts into centered areas.

As of September 2025, Le Chat can bear in mind earlier conversations due to a function known as Recollections.

That is along with Mistral AI’s suite of fashions: 

• Mistral Giant 2, the first giant language mannequin changing Mistral Giant.
• Pixtral Giant, unveiled in 2024 as a brand new addition to the Pixtral household of multimodal fashions.
• Magistral, its first household of reasoning fashions, launched in June 2025.
• Mistral Medium 3, launched in Could 2025 with the promise of offering effectivity with out compromising efficiency, meant for coding and STEM duties.
• Voxtral, Mistral’s first open-source AI audio mannequin, launched in July 2025.
• Devstral, an AI mannequin designed for coding and overtly accessible underneath the Apache 2.0 license, that means it may be used commercially with out restriction.
• Codestral, an earlier generative AI mannequin for code whose license banned industrial functions.
• “Les Ministraux,” a household of fashions optimized for edge units comparable to telephones.
• Mistral Saba, centered on Arabic.

In March 2025, the corporate launched Mistral OCR, an optical character recognition API that may flip any PDF right into a textual content file to make it simpler for AI fashions to ingest.

In June 2025, Mistral AI additionally launched a vibe coding consumer, Mistral Code, to compete with Windsurf, Anysphere’s Cursor, and GitHub Copilot.

Who’re Mistral AI’s founders?

Mistral AI’s three founders share a background in AI analysis at main U.S. tech corporations which have operations in Paris. Its CEO Arthur Mensch used to work at Google’s DeepMind; CTO Timothée Lacroix and chief scientist officer Guillaume Lample are former Meta staffers.

Mistral’s co-founding advisers embrace Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve (additionally a board member) and Charles Gorintin from medical insurance startup Alan. Former digital minister Cédric O can also be an adviser to the corporate, a incontrovertible fact that has brought about persistent controversy as a consequence of his earlier position.

Are Mistral’s fashions open supply?

Not all of them. Mistral differentiates its premier fashions, whose weights will not be accessible for industrial functions, from its free fashions, for which it supplies weights underneath the Apache 2.0 license.

Free fashions embrace analysis fashions comparable to Mistral NeMo, in-built collaboration with Nvidia which the startup open sourced in July 2024.

How does Mistral make cash?

Whereas a lot of Mistral AI’s choices are free or now have free tiers, Le Chat additionally has paid tiers. Launched in February 2025, Le Chat’s Professional subscription prices $14.99 a month.

On the B2B entrance, Mistral AI monetizes its premier fashions by APIs with usage-based pricing. Enterprises may also license these fashions, and the corporate probably additionally generates a big share of its income from its strategic partnerships, a few of which it highlighted through the Paris AI Summit.

Total, nonetheless, Mistral AI’s income is reportedly within the eight-digit vary, in accordance with a number of sources.

What partnerships has Mistral AI closed?

In 2024, Mistral AI signed a cope with Microsoft that included a €15 million funding and a strategic partnership for distributing the French firm’s AI fashions by Microsoft’s Azure platform.

The U.Ok.’s Competitors and Markets Authority (CMA) swiftly concluded that the deal didn’t qualify for investigation as a consequence of its small measurement, although the deal sparked some criticism within the EU.

In January 2025, Mistral signed a cope with press company Agence France-Presse (AFP) to let Le Chat question the AFP’s whole textual content archive courting again to 1983.

Mistral AI additionally secured strategic partnerships with France’s military and job company; Luxembourg, transport large CMA, German protection tech startup Helsing, IBM, Orange, and Stellantis.

In Could 2025, Mistral stated it will take part within the creation of an AI Campus within the Paris area, as a part of a three way partnership with UAE-investment agency MGX, NVIDIA, and France’s state-owned funding financial institution Bpifrance.

In June 2025, Mistral stated it will launch a European platform devoted to AI and powered by Nvidia processors, Mistral Compute, in 2026. The initiative was hailed as ‘historic’ by Macron, who shared the stage with Mensch and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on the VivaTech convention shortly after the announcement.

In July 2025, Mistral launched AI for Residents, an initiative that the corporate claimed might “assist States and public establishments strategically harness AI for his or her folks by remodeling public companies.”

In September 2025, Mistral and chip firm ASML struck a partnership “to discover using AI fashions throughout ASML’s product portfolio in addition to analysis, growth and operations.”

What enterprise options has Mistral AI developed?

In Could 2025, Mistral AI launched the Mistral Brokers API to “empower enterprises to make use of AI in additional sensible and impactful methods,” in accordance with its Head of Developer Relations, Sophia Yang.

In September 2025, the corporate unveiled a revamped Connectors listing, showcasing Le Chat’s integrations with some 20 enterprise instruments, together with Asana, Atlassian, Field, Google Drive, Notion, and Zapier, in addition to emails and calendars; and shortly, Databricks and Snowflake.

How a lot funding has Mistral AI raised to this point?

By February 2025, Mistral AI had raised a complete of round €1 billion, a few of which was debt financing. The cash was raised throughout a number of fairness rounds performed in shut succession.

In June 2023, only one month after being based, Mistral AI raised a file $112 million seed spherical led by Lightspeed Enterprise Companions. Sources on the time stated the seed spherical, Europe’s largest ever, valued the startup at $260 million. 

Different buyers in that spherical included Bpifrance, Eric Schmidt, Exor Ventures, First Minute Capital, Headline, JCDecaux Holding, La Famiglia, LocalGlobe, Motier Ventures, Rodolphe Saadé, Sofina, and Xavier Niel.

Six months later, Mistral closed €385 million Sequence A ($415 million on the time), at a reported valuation of $2 billion. The spherical was led by Andreessen Horowitz, and noticed participation from Lightspeed, in addition to BNP Paribas, CMA-CGM, Conviction, Elad Gil, Basic Catalyst and Salesforce.

Microsoft’s $16.3 million convertible funding in Mistral as a part of a partnership introduced in February 2024, was offered as a Sequence A extension, implying an unchanged valuation.

In June 2024, Mistral raised €600 million (about $640 million) in a mixture of fairness and debt. The long-rumored spherical was led by Basic Catalyst at a $6 billion valuation, with notable buyers together with Cisco, IBM, Nvidia, and Samsung Enterprise Funding Company collaborating.

Earlier this 12 months, Mistral AI was rumored to be finalizing a €2 billion funding at a post-money valuation of $14 billion. This adopted earlier experiences that the corporate was in talks to lift $1 billion in fairness from buyers who included Abu Dhabi’s MGX fund, in addition to tons of of hundreds of thousands of euros in debt.

On September 9, 2025, Mistral closed a €1.7 billion (about $2 billion) Sequence C spherical led by ASML at a €11.7 billion (roughly $13.8 billion) valuation. In accordance with the corporate, the spherical noticed investments from current backers DST World, Andreessen Horowitz, Bpifrance, Basic Catalyst, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, and NVIDIA.

How is Mistral AI approaching AI regulation?

Mensch was a part of a bunch of European CEOs who signed an open letter in July 2025 urging Brussels to ‘cease the clock’ for 2 years earlier than key obligations of the EU Synthetic Intelligence Act enter into drive. The European Fee is sticking to its authentic timeline.

What might a Mistral AI exit seem like?

Mistral is “not on the market,” Mensch stated in January 2025 on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos. “After all, [an IPO is] the plan.” 

This is sensible, given how a lot the startup has raised to date: Even a big sale might not present excessive sufficient multiples for its buyers, to not point out sovereignty issues relying on the acquirer. 

Nonetheless, the one method to undoubtedly squash persistent acquisition rumors — recently naming Apple — is to scale its income to ranges that would even remotely justify its valuation. Both manner, keep tuned.

This story was initially revealed on February 28, 2025, and will probably be frequently up to date.