The French company Mistral AI, which created the AI assistant Le Chat and a number of foundational models, is likely the only European business that could rival OpenAI and is officially recognized as one of France’s most promising tech businesses. However, its global market share is still quite little in relation to its $6 billion valuation.
Nonetheless, there was some excitement surrounding the recent release of its conversation assistant on mobile app stores, especially in its own country. French President Emmanuel Macron stated in a television interview prior to the AI Action Summit in Paris, “Go and download Le Chat, which is made by Mistral, rather than ChatGPT by OpenAI — or something else.”
Even while this surge of interest is positive, Mistral AI still has difficulties competing with companies like OpenAI and maintaining its claim to be “the world’s greenest and leading independent AI lab.”
What is Mistral AI?
Since its founding in 2023, Mistral AI has raised a sizable sum of money with the goal of “putting frontier AI in the hands of everyone.” The phrase is intended to emphasize the company’s support for openness in AI, even though it doesn’t specifically target OpenAI.
Le Chat, a chat assistant that replaces ChatGPT, is now accessible on iOS and Android as well. In the two weeks after its mobile release, it amassed one million downloads and even took the top spot in France for free downloads on the iOS App Store.
This complements the collection of models offered by Mistral AI, which consists of:
Who are Mistral AI’s founders?
Mistral The three founders of AI have a combined history of working on AI research at large American tech firms with sizable operations in Paris. CTO Timothée Lacroix and chief scientist Guillaume Lample are former Meta employees, and CEO Arthur Mensch was formerly employed at Google’s DeepMind.
Co-founding advisers also include former digital minister Cédric O, who raised controversy because of his prior position, Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve (who is now a board member), and Charles Gorintin from health insurance startup Alan.
Are Mistral AI’s models open source?
Not every one of them. Mistral AI distinguishes between its free models, for which it offers weight access under the Apache 2.0 license, and its premier models, whose weights are not available for commercial use.
Research models like Mistral NeMo, developed in partnership with Nvidia and made publicly available by the startup in July 2024, are examples of free models.
How does Mistral AI make money?
Mistral AI intends to generate some income via Le Chat’s paid levels, even if many of its products are free or currently have free tiers. Le Chat’s Pro plan, which was launched in February 2025, costs $14.99 per month.
Mistral AI uses usage-based pricing APIs to monetize its top models on a strictly business-to-business basis. These models are also available for licensing by businesses, and the company probably makes a sizable portion of its income from strategic alliances, some of which it highlighted at the Paris AI Summit.
However, other sources claim that Mistral AI’s overall revenue is still in the eight-digit level.
What partnerships has Mistral AI closed?
In 2024, Mistral AI signed a contract with Microsoft that includes a €15 million investment and a strategic alliance for the distribution of its AI models via Microsoft’s Azure platform. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of the United Kingdom quickly determined that the sale was too minor to warrant further inquiry. It did, however, also draw considerable criticism within the EU.
Mistral AI and the news organization Agence France-Presse (AFP) inked an agreement in January 2025 that would allow Chat to search through the AFP’s complete text record, which goes back to 1983.
Additionally, Mistral AI has key alliances with IBM, Orange, Stellantis, the French army and employment agency, and the German defense technology firm Helsing.
How much funding has Mistral AI raised to date?
Mistral AI has raised about €1 billion in funding so far, or about $1.04 billion at the current currency rate, as of February 2025. This comprises a number of closely spaced stock funding rounds as well as some debt financing.
Before releasing its initial models, Mistral AI secured a record $112 million in June 2023 in a seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. According to sources at the time, the firm, which was only a month old at the time, was valued at $260 million in the seed round, which was the biggest in Europe.
Bpifrance, Eric Schmidt, Exor Ventures, First Minute Capital, Headline, JCDecaux Holding, La Famiglia, LocalGlobe, Motier Ventures, Rodolphe Saadé, Sofina, and Xavier Niel were among the other investors in this seed round.
It closed a €385 million ($415 million at the time) Series A just six months later, with a $2 billion reported valuation. With participation from current backer Lightspeed, BNP Paribas, CMA-CGM, Conviction, Elad Gil, General Catalyst, and Salesforce, the round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
A Series A extension implied an unaltered valuation for Microsoft’s $16.3 million convertible investment in Mistral AI, which was part of their cooperation announced in February 2024.
Mistral AI then raised €600 million in June 2024, which was around $640 million at the time due to a combination of debt and stock. With prominent investors like Cisco, IBM, Nvidia, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, and others, General Catalyst led the long-rumored round with a $6 billion value.
What could a Mistral AI exit look like?
Mensch stated at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2025 that Mistral is “not for sale.” “The plan is, of course, [an IPO].”
Considering how much the startup has raised so far, this makes sense: In addition to sovereignty issues based on the buyer, even a big sale might not provide high enough multiples for its investors.
However, scaling its revenue to levels that may even remotely justify its over $6 billion valuation is the only surefire way to put an end to recurrent purchase speculations. In any case, keep an eye out.