Samsung is in talks to invest in French AI unicorn Mistral, raising the company’s valuation to 20 billion euros.

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Samsung Electronics is in talks to invest several hundred million euros in French AI startup Mistral, a move that will further strengthen the market position of Europe's most valuable AI company and reflects the fierce global competition for AI computing resources among technology investors.

According to sources cited by the Financial Times on the 22nd, this investment is part of a larger financing round for Mistral, which is expected to bring its valuation to around 20 billion euros upon completion. Samsung has previously invested in Mistral through its venture capital arm, and the amount for this round could reach as much as 1 billion euros. Meanwhile, Scaleup Europe Fund under Swedish investment firm EQT is also in discussions with Mistral about participating in this round. Negotiations are ongoing and terms have not yet been finalized. Samsung, Mistral, and EQT all declined to comment.

The backdrop to this financing is that the Trump administration last month restricted foreign access to Anthropic's latest models, which triggered a strong demand for "sovereign AI" capabilities among governments and companies in Europe and Asia. Mistral is seizing this market opportunity with its "open" AI models that allow customers to freely customize and control them.

Valuation jumps nearly 70% in less than a year, financing size may exceed €5 billion

This financing comes less than a year after Mistral's last major valuation increase. Reportedly, Mistral is now seeking to raise several billion euros, with the overall financing expected to exceed €5 billion.

By contrast, less than a year ago, a deal led by Dutch chip equipment giant ASML set Mistral's valuation at €12 billion. In September last year, Mistral completed a €1.7 billion financing round, with most of the funds coming from ASML—which is using Mistral's AI models to enhance the efficiency of its precision lithography equipment. Earlier this year, Mistral also completed its first debt financing of $830 million to build Nvidia-powered data centers across Europe.

EQT’s Scaleup Europe Fund is backed by Brussels and managed by EQT, with private investors including Novo Holdings and Santander Bank. The fund focuses on supporting promising European companies in competitive fields such as AI.

Chip strategy drives partnership

The interaction between Samsung and Mistral reflects the current chip supply bottleneck faced by the AI industry. As demand for computing power for AI model training and inference continues to surge, semiconductor supply is lagging far behind demand growth, prompting AI developers to race to establish deeper collaborations with chip suppliers.

According to South Korean media reports in April this year, Samsung and Mistral previously engaged in talks about collaborating in the field of AI memory chips. Samsung is the world’s largest manufacturer of memory chips, and thanks to AI-driven demand pushing up chip prices, its profits have surged over the past year.

This same logic is playing out among other industry players as well. Last month, US memory chip maker Micron invested in Anthropic and signed a comprehensive agreement covering long-term storage supply.

Microsoft expands partnership, revenue sources stabilize

Just this week, Mistral announced an expanded partnership with Microsoft. As one of Mistral’s earliest investors, Microsoft has pledged “multi-billion-dollar” investments in Mistral’s computing infrastructure, and Mistral’s latest models will be made available through Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

This deal will provide Mistral with a stable source of income, helping it use this as a credit base to secure financing and accelerate expansion of its computing power—including deploying thousands of Nvidia’s latest Vera Rubin chips.

Founded just three years ago, Mistral has become the most valuable AI startup in Europe. Its CEO, Arthur Mensch, told the Financial Times in February this year that Mistral’s annual recurring revenue is expected to surpass $1 billion by the end of the year, driven by rapid expansion of its enterprise client base.

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