ASML has emerged as the top shareholder for Mistral AI, after leading its latest funding round, according to a Reuters report. ASML is committing 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) for Mistral’s 1.7 billion euro (~$2 billion) fundraise and is expected to get a board seat at Mistral. This round will make Mistral the most valuable AI company in Europe, with a 10-million-euro ($11.7 billion) pre-money valuation in its latest Series C funding round.
Mistral, the French company behind AI assistant Le Chat, and several foundational models, is regarded as one of France’s most promising tech startups, and Europe’s biggest competitor against OpenAI. The company has raised significant amounts of funding since its creation in 2023 with the ambition to “put frontier AI in the hands of everyone.” Le Chat, the startup’s alternative to ChatGPT, is available on iOS and Android, and has reached 1 million downloads in the two weeks following its mobile release, even grabbing France’s top spot for free downloads on the iOS App Store.
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Earlier this year, French president Emmanuel Macron expressed support for the partnership between Mistral and U.S. chip giant Nvidia. Macron called the collaboration a “game changer,” and stated the project would bolster French technological independence and sovereignty with its own AI cloud, data centers and computing capacity. Macron had also said “Go and download Le Chat, which is made by Mistral, rather than ChatGPT by OpenAI — or something else,” in a TV interview ahead of the AI Action Summit in Paris in February 2025.
Mistral was founded by Arthur Mensch–the company’s CEO–who previously worked at Google’s Deepmind, as well as CTO Timothée Lacroix and chief scientist officer Guillaume Lample, who previously worked at Meta.
Mistral’s funding round is set for a $14 billion valuation, according to a Bloomberg report.
Sources said that a stake in Mistral would tie together two European technology leaders, and the cash from ASML could help Mistral make Europe less reliant on U.S. and Chinese AI models. ASML makes lithography equipment crucial for cutting-edge chip production and uses AI to help make its tools more efficient. The company could benefit from implementing Mistral’s data analytics and AI capabilities to improve the performance of its tools and develop additional products. ASML is the sole supplier of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment to chip manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Intel. The EUV systems cost roughly $180 million and are necessary to manufacture the most advanced chips.