Mistral Announces Over 10 Billion Fundraising, Emerging as One of Europe's Top Two AI Companies
French artificial intelligence start-up Mistral AI has announced that it has raised €385 million in funding to become one of Europe's two leading artificial intelligence companies.
Mistral was co-founded by industry heavyweights only in May this year and has already raised €105 million in June. When the second round of funding is secured, Mistral will be valued at €2 billion, making it a French tech unicorn. Mistral, whose second round of funding was led by California-based venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz, is backed by several U.S. tech giants, including software developer Salesforce and, according to industry insiders, Nvidia, the world's leading computer chip brand, reflecting the buzz Mistral is generating. Mistral, co-founded by three 31-year-old AI experts, is seen as a competitor to OpenAI, providing open-source language models made from public data.
As European AI companies emerge, the EU wants to ensure the future of the industry is regulated without restricting innovation in the region, and Mistral was one of the few AI companies to participate in last month's UK AI Security Summit, and is said to be actively involved in the development of an EU AI bill that seeks to lobby the EU to restrict regulation to AI companies developing client-side products.
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