Mistral in talks to raise €500mn at €5bn valuation

French artificial intelligence start-up Mistral is in talks to raise €500mn in a deal that would more than double its valuation to at least €5bn, following proposals from multiple investors seeking to invest in the one-year-old company. Mistral’s three founders, led by chief executive Arthur Mensch, are considering their options just four months after raising about €400mn in a round that valued the start-up at €2bn. Venture capital and sovereign wealth funds are among those eager to back the Paris-based company, seen as Europe’s best chance of taking on Silicon Valley groups OpenAI and Anthropic, according to multiple people close to the talks. Mistral has been approached by investors and has begun discussions over a fundraising deal that would value the company at €5bn or more, according to three people familiar with the situation. If the company pushed ahead, it was likely to raise as much as €500mn, said two of the people. Mistral declined to comment. The Information first reported on the proposed €5bn valuation figure. The company’s rapid rise to prominence is striking even by the frenzied standards of an AI boom that has played out over the past 18 months. Founded in May 2023 by three former Meta and Google AI researchers, Mistral has released several versions of its AI model, unveiled a chatbot called Le Chat that is similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and begun to generate revenue in the past few months. The company has attracted backing from prominent venture capital funds, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst as well as Nvidia, Salesforce and former Google chief Eric Schmidt, over two funding rounds.

Full report : Mistral is in talks to raise as much as €500 million at a €5 billion plus valuation from VCs and wealth funds, after raising ~€400 million at a €2 billion valuation in December 2023.