Paris-based generative AI startup Mistral AI said Tuesday that it has nearly doubled its valuation to more than $24 billion with a $3.5 billion Series D fundraise.
Samsung Electronics led the round, with participation from co-leads Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT, and existing investor PSG Equity.
The financing comes nearly one year to the day after Mistral’s $2 billion Series C, which valued the company at $13.7 billion. Mistral has now raised $7.5 billion since its 2023 inception.
Mistral’s new raise means it retains its spot as the most highly valued foundation model company out of Europe. There are currently seven private frontier labs valued above $20 billion on The Crunchbase Unicorn board — eight including China’s ByteDance, which is also building its own model — though the rest are all based in the U.S. and China.
In a statement, the company says the new capital will “significantly expand Mistral’s frontier research” and help it “expand infrastructure and accelerate” its commercial growth and international footprint. Mistral currently operates across 20 countries and counts more than 125 global enterprises as customers, including Airbus, ASML, BMW and HSBC.
Mistral builds AI models for tasks such as generating text, writing code and analyzing documents, putting it in competition with U.S. companies including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
However, unlike many of its U.S. rivals, Mistral touts greater control for businesses by offering models they can customize and run on their own systems rather than relying entirely on a third-party cloud provider.
Europe’s VC momentum
This year has marked a turning point for European venture funding. In Q2, Europe posted its strongest quarter in four years for venture funding, Crunchbase data shows. All told, Europe-based startups raised $24 billion in the quarter, up around a third quarter over quarter and two-thirds higher than the $14.4 billion raised in Q2 2025.
At the time of Mistral’s $2 billion Series C, that raise represented the largest venture round ever raised by a European AI company.
This latest round has now eclipsed that, and several other large AI-related deals in Europe have also closed this year. They include London-based Google spinoff Isomorphic Labs, which raised a $2.1 billion Series B in May led by Thrive Capital and AI data center provider Nscale, which raised a $2 billion Series C at a $14.6 billion valuation in March co-led by 8090 Industries and Aker. (It has also since raised several billion in debt financing, per Crunchbase.)
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Related reading:
- Europe Posted Its Strongest Venture Funding Quarter In 4 Years As UK Gains, M&A Holds Up
- Mistral’s $2B Series C Is Europe’s Largest AI Round By A Lot
Illustration: Dom Guzman
