Mistral is rumored to raise €3 billion at a €20 billion valuation

French AI lab Mistral is in early discussions to raise about 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion), Bloomberg reports. I mentioned Friday, citing anonymous sources.

The financing round will value the company at approximately €20 billion (about $23.15 billion), nearly double its valuation of €11.7 billion. receive In its Series C funding round last September.

Mistral, one of Europe’s leading AI startups, launched in 2023 with a stated ambition to “put leading-edge AI into everyone’s hands.” The company has taken a more open approach to developing artificial intelligence compared to its American competitors, an offer Some large core language models have open weights, allowing anyone to customize them as they see fit.

The company also offers closed models specifically designed for use cases such as programming, voice reproduction and generation, and optical character recognition.

And recently with European countries Spacing Themselves of American technology, the Mistral It was placed itself as a more friendly, “sovereign” and domestic alternative. The company is preparing Data center near Paris It has entered into a partnership with Army of Francethe Government of Luxembourgand numerous Great European Companies.

However, Mistral has only raised about $4 billion so far, according to Pitchbook, a fraction of what US rivals OpenAI ($186 billion) and Anthropic ($161.25 billion) have raised. These labs are also valued much higher, reflecting how far US labs have come in revenue, model adoption, and corporate demand.

Mistral did not immediately respond to a request for comment.