Mistral bags $24 billion valuation as Samsung leads funding for Europe's AI champion

Mistral on Tuesday said it raised 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) in fresh funding led by memory chip giant Samsung, as the French startup looks to position itself as a European alternative to rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic.

The investment also involved the Scaleup Europe Fund, a European Union-backed investment fund managed by EQT, and existing investor PSG Equity. Mistral said the funding gives it a post-money valuation of more than 21 billion euros.

Mistral was valued at 11.7 billion euros a year ago, after a funding round led by Dutch chip equipment maker ASML.

Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral, told CNBC in an interview that the funding would go toward building more infrastructure, including its own data centers, and renting out computing capacity.

"Long term, the plan is to fully rely on capacity that we are building ourselves, and so that means that the amount of compute that we own is going to grow ... around 100% in the next five years," Mensch said.

The CEO added that the company will train "bigger and faster models."