French AI startup Mistral said Monday it has secured $830 million in debt financing to fund a data center powered by thousands of Nvidia chips.
Founded in 2023, Mistral is one of the few European startups building foundational AI models, looking to compete with the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic, albeit with a far smaller war chest.
The company has increasingly looked to invest in the infrastructure needed to power AI, and in February it announced a 1.2-billion-euro plan to build data centers and compute capacity in Sweden.
"Scaling our infrastructure in Europe is critical to empower our customers and to ensure AI innovation and autonomy remain at the heart of Europe," said Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral, in a statement.
"We will continue to invest in this area, given the surging and sustained demand from governments, enterprises and research institutions seeking to build their own customized AI environment, rather than depend on third-party cloud providers."
The transaction was supported by a consortium of seven top-tier global banks, including Bpifrance, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole CIB, HSBC, La Banque Postale, MUFG and Natixis CIB.
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