Mistral AI Receives €385 Million Investment in Second Round

French artificial intelligence startup Mistral AI announced that it has raised 385 million euros, becoming one of Europe's two AI leaders. Mistral, founded in May by leading names in the industry, had already raised 105 million euros in June. Among European AI firms, only the German Aleph Alpha has raised this much funding, raising nearly 500 million euros in early November. The second round of funding was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch said the newly announced finding was "another important step towards acceleration".

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Mistral AI

The emergence of European AI players comes at a time when the European Union is seeking to secure future regulation of the sector without restricting innovation in the region. EU member states and lawmakers have reached an agreement on how to draft rules governing AI models. France and Germany initially feared that excessive regulations would cripple their emerging champions.

Mistral's backers include several American tech giants, including software publisher Salesforce, as well as Nvidia group, the world leader in supercomputer chips, according to industry sources. The mobilisation of Silicon Valley's biggest players reflects the enthusiasm that Mistral has generated in just eight months of existence. The US media have already cited it as a potential competitor to OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Mistral has 22 employees. Like many of its competitors, it offers companies open-source language models fuelled by publicly available data. Its three French co-founders are CEO Mensch and Guillaume Lample and Timothee Lacroix. All have experience at major US tech firms, including Meta.