Mistral AI advances with €11.7B valuation

Mistral AI, a French startup behind Le Chat and open models, expands funding and partnerships to become a serious OpenAI challenger.

Mistral AI emerges as a European rival to OpenAI with a €11.7 billion valuation

Mistral AI has raised a high-profile €1.7 billion in a September 2025 Series C led by ASML, lifting its valuation to €11.7 billion. The funding underscores a rapid buildup of alliances across industry and government-linked partners, including Microsoft, AFP and other European players, as the company scales its product line beyond Le Chat.

Le Chat has shown strong consumer momentum, with 1 million downloads in two weeks after its release. The product has evolved with new features such as memories, a deep research mode, and the Projects workspace. Mistral’s model family blends premier weights that are not publicly available with free models released under Apache 2.0, alongside a growing suite of tools for coding, audio, and OCR tasks. The company is also betting on enterprise adoption through APIs, licensing, and an expanding connectors directory that links Le Chat to tools like Google Drive, Notion and Zapier.

Mistral’s push reflects Europe’s strategic aim to build sovereign AI capabilities while keeping a degree of openness. The mix of public partnerships, government advisory roles, and large private funding signals a willingness to blend policy with advanced technology. Yet the path is not risk free. Heavy reliance on a small group of investors and strategic partners raises questions about independence and long-term profitability. Regulation and political scrutiny across Europe could shape when and how quickly Mistral expands, even as demand for enterprise AI grows.

Highlights

The coming years will test how Europe translates ambition into sustained leadership.