Mistral AI

Artificial Intelligence · Foundation Models

Funding

Samsung reportedly in talks to invest $1B in Mistral AI at $23B valuation

A memory chip giant taking equity in a foundation-model lab shows hardware suppliers now want a stake in AI's software layer too.

• Samsung is in talks to invest roughly €1 billion in a new Mistral AI funding round that could value the French startup at about €20 billion ($22.8B), the Financial Times reported.
• Mistral AI, based in Paris, builds open-weight large language models and markets itself as a sovereign European alternative to US AI labs.
• The round, reportedly totaling around €3 billion, would nearly double Mistral's €11.7 billion valuation set in a September Series C led by ASML's €1.3 billion check.
• EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund, backed by Brussels, is also in discussions to join the round alongside existing investors Novo Holdings and Santander.
• The talks follow a separate multibillion-dollar Microsoft commitment to expand Mistral's computing infrastructure in Europe and carry its models on Azure.
• Samsung's memory chip business helped push its market cap past $1 trillion this year, riding demand for the high-bandwidth memory that trains models like Mistral's.
• A hardware supplier taking equity in a frontier AI lab signals that chipmakers now see strategic value in owning a piece of the software layer they power, not just selling into it.