We are delighted to announce our participation in Mistral AI’s recently closed €600M funding round, investing via our later-stage Summit Fund.
Large Language Models (LLMs) have become a cornerstone of contemporary AI and foundational modeling, deeply impacting and disrupting a number of industries. However, the operational costs remain significant due to computational resources, data requirements, and a need for top-tier talent to operate. At the same time, the market has predominantly been led by American companies, including OpenAI, Meta, and DeepMind.
Recently, Europe is seeing the appearance of its first serious LLM contender: Mistral AI. Founded in 2023 by Arthur Mensch, Timothée Lacroix, and Guillaume Lample, a highly experienced team with tenures at the likes of DeepMind and Meta, Mistral AI’s innovative approach to building LLMs through open-source structuring has already tackled the key challenges of costs and resources that its trans-atlantic competitors face. This approach has proven to be highly successful, with the company securing substantial funding and strategic partnerships with industry giants such as Microsoft, Nvidia, and Salesforce. Today, Mistral AI is valued at €5.8bn.
The Series B funding round of c. €600M (including debt) takes Mistral’s total raised to $1Bn, making the AI company the latest French unicorn to emerge from the country. Led by DST and General Catalyst, we join previous investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Headline, Microsoft, Salesforce, NVIDIA, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Eric Schmidt, as well as new investors including IBM, Cisco, and French growth VC Korelya Capital.
Having kicked off monetization with large enterprise accounts, including partnerships with SAP, IBM, and Snowflake, Mistral is rapidly expanding its revenues, making this the perfect time to invest via the redalpine Summit Fund.