France’s Mistral AI announced on September 8, 2026 that it had closed a €3 billion ($3.5 billion) Series D funding round led by Samsung Electronics, lifting its post-money valuation above €21 billion (roughly $24 billion). The round was co-led by the Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT, and existing investor PSG Equity. New investors included Advent, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, while existing backers such as a16z, NVIDIA, Bpifrance and Index Ventures also participated.
Mistral called the transaction the largest equity fundraising round ever completed by a European technology company. The valuation is almost twice the €11.7 billion level reached in its €1.7 billion ASML-led Series C in September 2025. Samsung also entered a strategic partnership with Mistral alongside the investment, planning to integrate Mistral’s AI services, including Mistral Large, across its semiconductor operations and develop customised on-premises AI models for chip engineering and manufacturing.
CEO Arthur Mensch said the new capital will be used to expand compute infrastructure and data centres, with the company planning to own more of its own capacity rather than rent it. Mistral expects its owned compute to grow by roughly 100% over the next five years, part of a plan targeting 200 megawatts of European capacity by the end of 2027 and up to 1 gigawatt by 2030. The company is also on track to exceed $1 billion in annual recurring revenue before the end of the year, according to Mensch.
The French firm is positioning itself as a sovereign AI alternative for enterprises and governments. Its more than 125 enterprise customers include Airbus, ASML and HSBC across 20 countries. CFO Johan Bergqvist described Mistral as 'more of a mix of Palantir and Anthropic' and argued that winning enterprise AI is not only about size, because the company needs less capital than some US competitors. The French government has already chosen Mistral models for a civil service tool, and a domestic supplier replaced Palantir systems as Paris’ intelligence services solution in June.
Mistral also has a separate multibillion-dollar infrastructure agreement with Microsoft announced in July. Microsoft will use part of Mistral’s expanded European GPU infrastructure for cloud and AI services, with the build-out expected to use thousands of Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs. Microsoft did not participate in the new Series D.
On the same day, ASML expanded its partnership with Samsung on High NA EUV lithography. Samsung plans to be the first in the industry to use ASML’s High NA machines for DRAM memory production, targeting 2028, and joined an ASML-led consortium moving the industry’s photomask standard from 6 inches to 12 inches. A day earlier, ASML and TSMC announced the same 12-inch push, with a pilot line planned for 2031 and advanced-node production by 2033. TSMC also plans to bring High NA into high-volume manufacturing from 2030.
The announcements reinforce Europe’s push to close the AI gap with the US and China. The World Economic Forum has noted that Europe has produced only three foundation AI models, compared with 40 in the US and 15 in China, while US hyperscalers hold nearly 70% of the European cloud market.
