Samsung in talks to invest in Mistral at €20bn valuation
South Korean giant could invest as much as €1bn in French AI group seeking to be a leading alternative to US tech
Samsung is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of euros in the AI start-up Mistral, a move that would bolster the French company’s efforts to become a leading alternative to US technology groups.
The South Korean conglomerate is discussing an investment in Mistral as part of a broader fundraising round that could value the group at roughly €20bn, according to people familiar with the matter.
Samsung, which had previously backed the group through its venture arm, could invest about €1bn in the new round, one of the people said.
The talks reflect a broader push by AI developers to secure partnerships with semiconductor suppliers as the industry grapples with surging demand that far outstrips the supply of computing power.
Mistral is seeking to capitalise on growing interest from European and Asian companies and governments for alternatives to leading US AI models, after the Trump administration blocked foreign access to Anthropic’s latest Mythos and Fable models last month.
The US export controls on Anthropic have sparked a wave of interest in “sovereign AI” capacity. From its inception, Mistral has focused on “open” AI models that can be customised and controlled by customers, meaning no company or government can switch them off.
Samsung has previously invested in Mistral through its venture arm. Overall, Mistral is seeking to raise several billion euros as part of a new round, the people added, which comes less than a year after it was valued at €12bn in a deal led by Dutch chip equipment giant ASML.
Swedish investor EQT’s Scaleup Europe Fund is also in talks to back the fundraising round, these people said. Talks remain ongoing and the terms could yet shift, with no final decisions yet taken, the people cautioned. Sifted previously reported on EQT’s discussions.
The vehicle, which is expected to exceed €5bn, is backed by Brussels and managed by EQT. It has also attracted backing from private investors including Novo Holdings and Santander to fund promising European companies in competitive sectors such as AI.
Mistral, Samsung and EQT declined to comment.
The Paris-based group raised €1.7bn in September, with most of those funds coming from ASML, which is using its AI models to accelerate production of the sophisticated machinery used to make cutting-edge chips. Earlier this year, Mistral raised $830mn in its debut debt financing to support the construction of Nvidia-powered data centres across Europe.
Mistral and Samsung have previously discussed collaboration in the AI memory sector, South Korean media reported in April. Samsung is the world’s largest maker of memory chips and has seen its profits surge over the past year as rising AI demand drives up prices.
The US export controls on Anthropic sparked a wave of interest in “sovereign AI” capacity. From its inception,
But Mistral’s open models face growing competition from China. Moonshot’s latest Kimi model has sparked a new round of fears that low-cost Chinese rivals were narrowing the gap with US frontier AI systems.
Founded three years ago, Mistral has become Europe’s most valuable AI start-up. Chief executive Arthur Mensch told the FT in February that Mistral’s annual recurring revenues were on track to exceed $1bn by the end of this year, following a push to expand its enterprise customers.
Mistral’s talks with Samsung come as the AI industry faces an unprecedented chip crunch, as suppliers of memory and other semiconductors needed to run and train AI systems rush to expand capacity.
Last month, US memory manufacturer Micron invested in Anthropic as part of a wide-ranging partnership that included a long-term memory and storage supply agreement.
This week, Mistral struck an expanded partnership with Microsoft, one of its earliest investors, that sees the US software group making a “multibillion-dollar commitment” to use the French AI start-up’s computing infrastructure.
The Microsoft deal will help Mistral fund its own investment in computing capacity by providing a stable source of revenue that it could borrow against, as it adds thousands of Nvidia’s latest Vera Rubin chips. Mistral’s latest models will also be made available through Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing service.