Why Samsung Is Putting Billions Into Mistral
4 min read
On 8 September 2026, Mistral AI announced a Series D of 3 billion euros. The valuation after the round exceeds 21 billion euros. Samsung Electronics leads the consortium. Airbus, ASML and HSBC are on the customer list.
Key takeaways
- Mistral is raising 3 billion euros in a Series D. The valuation after the round exceeds 21 billion euros.
- Samsung Electronics leads, with EQT and PSG Equity as co-leads. Luxembourg, Advent and BlackRock join as new investors.
- The company names more than 125 major customers in 20 countries. Airbus, ASML and HSBC are named explicitly.
- Arthur Mensch plans to build the company’s own data centres and keep renting. Owned capacity is set to grow by around 100 percent within five years.
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What are open weights? Open weights are the published model parameters of an AI model. Companies can run such models on their own servers instead of sending every request to the provider’s cloud.
Three billion euros for a European lab
Three years after its founding in 2023, Mistral calls the round the largest equity raise any European technology company has ever completed. The Series D is the Paris lab’s fourth round, following Series A, B and C.
Samsung Electronics leads. Co-leads are EQT’s Scaleup Europe Fund and existing investor PSG Equity. New investors include Advent, funds managed by BlackRock and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Existing investors such as a16z, ASML, NVIDIA and Salesforce Ventures remain on board.
A year ago, Mistral raised 1.7 billion euros in a Series C round led by ASML at a valuation of 11.7 billion euros, as Bloomberg reports. The new round almost doubles that valuation.
The same models run at Airbus and in the mid-market
Mistral says it has more than 125 major customers across 20 countries. Airbus, ASML and HSBC are named explicitly. A mid-sized company can run the same models a corporation uses in manufacturing, either via the API or as open weights on its own servers.
In the first phase of the AI race, the question was who would build the strongest model. Organisations now ask how they can use AI in critical processes without giving up infrastructure and know-how. Mistral sells open weights plus in-house operation.
Alongside the US labs, there is now a Paris-based provider whose investors partly come from chip manufacturing.
The money goes into data centres and research
With the Series D, Mistral wants to finance research into new frontier models, the compute for training, infrastructure and international business. Chief executive Arthur Mensch told CNBC that over the long term the company would rely on capacity it builds itself. Its own compute would grow by around 100 percent within five years, while renting continues in parallel.
The groundwork is already under way: in March, Mistral secured debt financing of the equivalent of around 710 million euros for 13,800 Nvidia GB300 graphics processors in Bruyères-le-Châtel south of Paris, according to Data Center Dynamics. The Series D expands this build-out of its own data centres.
Samsung and ASML are suppliers and shareholders
ASML led the Series C, Samsung leads the Series D and NVIDIA remains an investor. The same companies that sell memory, lithography machines and accelerators hold stakes in the lab that puts their chips to work.
For comparison: in March, OpenAI received funding with committed capital of the equivalent of around 105 billion euros and a valuation of the equivalent of around 730 billion euros, as The Register calculates. Mistral remains considerably smaller. The superlative applies only to European equity raises.
A European alternative therefore exists and has fresh money. That does not make it independent of the chip supply chain, however. According to Android Headlines, Samsung plans to use Mistral’s models in its own semiconductor manufacturing, which makes the stake an industrial contract as well.
For customers, only planning certainty changes for now
The Series D will not change Mistral’s prices for the time being. It does increase the likelihood that the provider will still be running models and data centres in Europe in five years. That is exactly what matters to companies that do not want to tie their AI to US providers.
Mistral has not broken down which part of the 3 billion euros will go into open models and which into closed products. It also remains open whether smaller companies will receive the same contract terms as HSBC.
Frequently asked questions
Is this the largest tech funding round in the world?
No. Mistral speaks of the largest equity raise by a European technology company. In March, OpenAI stood at a valuation of the equivalent of around 730 billion euros.
Does a mid-sized company get the same models as Airbus?
Mistral names Airbus, ASML and HSBC as major customers. The company has not said whether the same contract terms apply to smaller firms. Openly available weights and the API are the public options.
Will the money go into its own data centres?
Mistral wants to finance research, training compute, infrastructure and sales. Arthur Mensch told CNBC that owned capacity would grow by around 100 percent within five years while renting continues in parallel.
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Translated from the German original using artificial intelligence. The German version is authoritative.
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