Mistral Raises €3 Billion, Its Valuation Nearly Doubling in a Year

Mistral AI raised €3 billion in a Series D round that values the French AI lab at more than €21 billion, the company said Sept. 8. Samsung Electronics led the round, with the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund and existing investor PSG Equity as co-leads.

New investors Advent, funds managed by BlackRock, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg joined the round, alongside returning backers a16z, ASML, General Catalyst, Lightspeed, Nvidia and Salesforce Ventures, Mistral said. Samsung's own commitment was roughly €1 billion, multiple outlets covering the deal reported. The valuation is close to double the €11.7 billion Mistral was worth after its Series C in September 2025, a round led by ASML.

CEO Arthur Mensch told CNBC the money will go toward building and owning data centers rather than only renting compute. "Long term, the plan is to fully rely on capacity that we are building ourselves, and so that means that the amount of compute that we own is going to grow ... around 100% in the next five years," Mensch said. Mistral separately holds an $830 million debt facility from seven French banks, a financing line distinct from the equity in this round.

The Revenue Question Mensch Wouldn't Close

Mistral's annualized revenue run rate topped $400 million in January 2026, up from about $20 million a year earlier, and Mensch has said he expects it to exceed $1 billion by the end of 2026, according to CNBC. Asked in September whether that target still holds, Mensch said he expects "to be beating" it "if everything happens as they are trending," but he declined to give an updated figure.

That leaves the multiple implied by the new valuation resting on a target rather than a confirmed number. At $1 billion in annualized revenue, a post-money valuation above $24 billion would price Mistral around 24 times forward revenue; short of that target, the multiple is higher. Mensch's own hedge, that he is confident revenue growth would continue into 2027 without naming a number, is the closest the company has come to addressing the gap.

Round	Announced	Amount raised	Post-money valuation
Series C	September 2025	About $2 billion	€11.7 billion
Series D	September 2026	€3 billion	More than €21 billion

Who Else Is Underwriting the Bet

Nvidia's participation in Mistral's round is one line in a much larger pattern of chipmaker capital flowing into the AI labs that buy its processors, a dynamic The Terminal detailed in Nvidia's SEC disclosures, where committed equity and customer purchase orders are hard to separate from the outside. a16z, also a Mistral backer, closed out a $2.75 billion expansion to one of its own funds this past week, The Terminal reported, giving the firm fresh capital to keep writing checks into rounds like this one.

Mistral operates across 20 countries and counts more than 125 enterprise customers, including Airbus, ASML and HSBC, the company said. It did not name a next funding milestone, leaving the $1 billion revenue target as the number likely to be checked against the €21 billion price the next time Mistral raises.