The French startup Mistral AI, which operates in the artificial intelligence industry, intends to raise funds for about €450 million ($487 million) as part of its latest financing round.
The media, citing sources familiar with the details of the intentions of the mentioned company, report that investments, according to preliminary information, will be represented by such well-known firms as Nvidia and Salesforce. Insiders also claim that after the funding round, the startup’s value is expected to increase to about $2 billion.
The current fundraising is being led by Andreessen Horowitz, who, according to media reports, is nowadays in talks to invest $216.9 million. There is also evidence that the startup may receive about $350 million more in equity from investors. If this information turns out to be true and the company is provided with the mentioned funds, Mistrai AI will exceed its fundraising goal.
There is also data that General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bpifrance, and several other companies will participate in the financing round. Lightspeed representatives declined to comment in response to a media request regarding investing in the startup. General Catalyst and Bpifrance did not respond to relevant requests.
The media reports that the three co-founders of the startup have agreed to sell equity worth more than $1 million each.
Mistral AI was founded by former scientists from Google DeepMind and Meta. The firm quickly became popular in the European area of startups operating in the space of the artificial intelligence industry. The company specializes in creating open-source software for chatbots and generative AI tools. Startup specialists use the experience of developers of large language models similar to those that OpenAI applies.
The company was launched in May of this year. Already in June, the startup’s value reached $259 million. The amount of initial financing for the company is $113 million. This is a record figure for Europe.
In September, the startup presented its first model of generative artificial intelligence. This digital thinking system is called Mistral 7B and has 7 billion parameters. Developers have access to the generative artificial intelligence model created by the startup for free.
The company stated that the Mistral 7B is the first step towards building the frontier models. The artificial intelligence system developed by the startup can solve generalization and structuring tasks, answer user questions, and generate text materials. The company claims that Mistral 7B processes and creates content faster compared to large proprietary solutions and provides lower financial costs.
Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch says that the startup has implemented a more efficient and cost-effective method of training artificial intelligence systems. According to him, this solution ensures a high level of competitiveness for the company. Arthur Mensch also stated that the learning method applied by his startup is twice as cheap as the methods used by other companies in the artificial intelligence industry.
