Mistral AI Valued at $14 Billion: The Rising European AI Startup Challenging OpenAI with Le Chat and Promising Models
The French AI lab, Mistral, renowned for creating the AI assistant Le Chat and several pioneering models, is now considered one of France’s most promising tech startups. With a potential valuation of $14 billion in its upcoming funding round, Mistral is making strides to challenge OpenAI as the leading European player in the AI sector.
Mistral, often referred to as the world’s greenest and foremost independent AI lab, has not yet achieved the same level of recognition as its competitors. However, French President Emmanuel Macron endorsed Le Chat during a 2025 interview, encouraging viewers to download it instead of ChatGPT by OpenAI.
Since its inception in 2023, Mistral has secured substantial funding with the ambitious goal of making cutting-edge AI accessible to everyone. Le Chat, an alternative to ChatGPT, is available on iOS and Android, reaching over 1 million downloads within two weeks of its mobile release, even claiming the top spot for free downloads on the iOS App Store in France.
In July 2025, Le Chat underwent an update that brought it closer to competing full-stack AI chatbots. The upgrade included a new “deep research” mode, native multilingual reasoning, advanced image editing, and the addition of Projects, which allows users to group chats, documents, and ideas into focused spaces.
Le Chat also introduced Memories in September 2025, allowing it to remember previous conversations.
In addition to Le Chat, Mistral offers open-source AI models and has launched various tools such as Mistral OCR, an optical character recognition API, and Mistral Code, a vibe coding client designed to compete with established players like Windsurf, Anysphere’s Cursor, and GitHub Copilot.
Mistral’s three founders all have backgrounds in AI research at major U.S. tech companies based in Paris. The CEO, Arthur Mensch, previously worked at Google DeepMind, while the CTO, Timothée Lacroix, and Chief Scientist Officer, Guillaume Lample, are former Meta employees.
Notable advisors to Mistral include Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve, Charles Gorintin from health insurance startup Alan, and former digital minister Cédric O.
Mistral differentiates its premier models, whose weights are not available for commercial purposes, from its free models, which are provided under the Apache 2.0 license. Free models include research models such as Mistral NeMo, built in collaboration with Nvidia and open-sourced in July 2024.
While many of Mistral’s offerings are free or now have free tiers, Le Chat also has paid plans. Introduced in February 2025, the Pro plan is priced at $14.99 a month.
On the B2B side, Mistral monetizes its premier models through APIs with usage-based pricing. Enterprises can also license these models, and the company likely generates a significant share of its revenue from strategic partnerships, some of which it showcased during the Paris AI Summit.
Mistral’s reported revenue is still in the eight-digit range, according to multiple sources.
In 2024, Mistral entered a deal with Microsoft that included a strategic partnership for distributing its AI models through Microsoft’s Azure platform and a €15 million investment. The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) determined that the deal did not require investigation due to its small size. However, it sparked some criticism in the EU.
In January 2025, Mistral signed a deal with press agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) to allow Chat to query AFP’s entire text archive dating back to 1983.
Mistral also secured strategic partnerships with France’s army and job agency, Luxembourg, shipping giant CMA, German defense tech startup Helsing, IBM, Orange, and Stellantis.
In May 2025, Mistral announced it would participate in the creation of an AI Campus in the Paris region, as part of a joint venture with UAE-investment firm MGX, NVIDIA, and France’s state-owned investment bank Bpifrance.
In June 2025, it was announced that beginning in 2026, Mistral will launch a European platform dedicated to AI and powered by Nvidia processors, Mistral Compute. The initiative was hailed as ‘historic’ by Macron, who shared the stage with Mensch and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the VivaTech conference shortly after the announcement.
In July 2025, Mistral announced AI for Citizens, a collaborative initiative to help states and public institutions strategically leverage AI for their people by transforming public services, fostering innovation, and ensuring competitiveness.
In May 2025, Mistral released the Mistral Agents API to “empower enterprises to use AI in more practical and impactful ways,” according to its Head of Developer Relations, Sophia Yang.
In September 2025, the company unveiled a revamped Connectors directory, showcasing Le Chat’s integrations with some 20 enterprise tools including Asana, Atlassian, Box, Google Drive, Notion, Zapier, as well as emails and calendars; and soon, Databricks and Snowflake.
As of February 2025, Mistral has raised around €1 billion in capital to date, approximately $1.04 billion at the current exchange rate. This includes some debt financing, as well as several equity financing rounds raised in quick succession.
In June 2023, and before it even released its first models, Mistral raised a record $112 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Other investors in this seed round included Bpifrance, Eric Schmidt, Exor Ventures, First Minute Capital, Headline, JCDecaux Holding, La Famiglia, LocalGlobe, Motier Ventures, Rodolphe Saadé, Sofina, and Xavier Niel.
Six months later, it closed a Series A of €385 million ($415 million at the time), at a reported valuation of $2 billion. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from existing backer Lightspeed, as well as BNP Paribas, CMA-CGM, Conviction, Elad Gil, General Catalyst, and Salesforce.
The $16.3 million convertible investment that Microsoft made in Mistral AI as part of their partnership announced in February 2024 was presented as a Series A extension, implying an unchanged valuation.
In June 2024, Mistral then raised €600 million in a mix of equity and debt (around $640 million at the exchange rate at the time). The long-rumored round was led by General Catalyst at a $6 billion valuation, with notable investors, including Cisco, IBM, Nvidia, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, and others.
According to Bloomberg, Mistral is now finalizing a €2 billion investment at a post-money valuation of $14 billion. This follows earlier reports that the company was in talks to raise $1 billion in equity from investors including Abu Dhabi’s MGX fund, as well as hundreds of millions of euros in debt. However, the specifics of this investment are yet to be confirmed.
Mensch has stated that Mistral is “not for sale,” but an IPO is planned. Given the significant amount of funding raised so far, even a large sale may not provide high enough multiples for its investors, not to mention sovereignty concerns depending on the acquirer. However, scaling revenue to levels justifying its valuation is essential to dispel acquisition rumors, particularly those involving Apple. Stay tuned for updates on Mistral’s growth and future plans.
