Mistral AI, a Paris, France-based artificial intelligence startup that makes commercial and open-source large language models, raised €600 million (about $640M) in Series B funding at a valuation of $6 billion.
Investors
The round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, Bpifrance, and BNP Paribas. Other corporate backers included big names such as Nvidia Corp., Samsung Venture Investment Corp., Salesforce Ventures LLC, and more.
Other investors include Belfius, Bertelsmann Investment, BNP Paribas, Bpifrance (through its Digital Venture fund), Cisco, Eurazeo, Headline, Hanwha Asset Management’s venture fund, IBM, Korelya Capital, Latitude, Millennium New Horizons, Sanabil Investments, ServiceNow and SV Angel.
General Catalyst is a venture capital firm that makes early-stage and transformational investments. General Catalyst backs exceptional entrepreneurs who are building innovative technology companies and market-leading businesses.
About Mistral AI
Founded in 2023 by Arthur Mensch, Timothée Lacroix, and Guillaume Lample, Mistral AI focuses on developing advanced foundational AI models. Mistral provides two types of models: open-weight models and optimized commercial models. One of Mistral AI's offerings is Codestral, a generative AI model for code, which has a restrictive license that prohibits commercial use of its outputs. Additionally, the company provides a chat assistant named Le Chat, which is currently free to use. The company’s mission is to make frontier AI ubiquitous and to provide tailor-made AI to all the builders.
Funding Details
Company: Mistral AI
Raised: $640.0M
Round: Series B
Funding Month: June 2024
Lead Investors: General Catalyst
Additional Investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, Bpifrance and BNP Paribas, Nvidia Corp., Samsung Venture Investment Corp., Salesforce Ventures LLC, Belfius, Bertelsmann Investment, BNP Paribas, Bpifrance, Cisco, Eurazeo, Headline, Hanwha Asset Management’s venture fund, IBM, Korelya Capital, Latitude, Millennium New Horizons, Sanabil Investments, ServiceNow, SV Angel
Company Website: https://mistral.ai/
Software Category: AI Models
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/11/paris-based-ai-startup-mistral-ai-raises-640-million/