Samsung nears investment in Mistral at €20 billion valuation

Samsung Electronics is in advanced talks to invest hundreds of millions of euros in Mistral AI, a deal that would value the French startup at roughly €20 billion.

Samsung Electronics is in advanced talks to invest hundreds of millions of euros in Mistral AI, part of a fundraising round that would value the Paris-based startup at roughly €20 billion ($22.81 billion), the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

"Europe should have access to the world's most capable AI without compromising control over their data, operations or digital future," Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, said in a statement Tuesday announcing an expanded partnership with Mistral.

The potential investment comes as Mistral's valuation has more than doubled from the roughly €10 billion it commanded when ASML led its Series C round last September. The startup has been on a fundraising tear, securing $830 million in debt earlier this year to build its own data center near Paris, and is reportedly seeking to raise around €3 billion in equity.

For Samsung, the investment would mark a strategic bet on European AI at a time when the continent's flagship lab is deepening ties with Microsoft while trying to maintain independence. The South Korean conglomerate, the world's largest memory chipmaker, has been expanding its AI capabilities across semiconductors and devices, making Mistral's model technology a natural complement.

Microsoft on Tuesday announced a multibillion-dollar expansion of its partnership with Mistral, committing to fund thousands of NVIDIA Vera Rubin chips for the startup's European compute base without taking a new equity stake. The arrangement gives Azure customers access to Mistral's French data centers and places Mistral's Medium 3.5 and OCR 4 models inside Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio.

The structure of the Microsoft deal appears designed to avoid the antitrust scrutiny that followed their initial 2024 partnership, when the European Commission examined whether the US hyperscaler held "decisive influence" over the startup. By funding compute rather than taking ownership, Microsoft gains a credible European model to offer regulated customers wary of American-only AI stacks, while Mistral gets the capital and chips to keep pace in a race where compute has become the binding constraint.

Mistral Chief Executive Arthur Mensch has positioned the company as Europe's answer to OpenAI and Anthropic, arguing that the continent should own and operate its own AI infrastructure. The startup is targeting one gigawatt of compute by 2030 under its Mistral Compute program, with an interim goal of up to 200 megawatts by 2027.

Samsung's potential involvement adds a new dimension. The company is the dominant supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI training and inference, counting NVIDIA as its largest customer. An investment in Mistral would give Samsung direct exposure to the model layer of the AI stack, potentially creating a channel for its memory products in European data centers.

The €20 billion valuation places Mistral among the most valuable private AI companies globally, trailing only OpenAI and Anthropic. The fundraising round, if completed, would provide the startup with additional runway to compete in a market where training costs for frontier models have climbed past $1 billion.

The deal shows that corporate appetite for AI at premium valuations remains strong despite broader market uncertainty. Samsung shares trade at about 20 times forward earnings, and the investment — while small relative to the company's $300 billion market cap — would highlight its commitment to AI beyond hardware. Mistral's rapid valuation growth from €10 billion to €20 billion in under a year highlights the premium investors are placing on independent AI labs with proprietary model technology.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.