Samsung in Talks to Invest in AI Startup Mistral at €20B Value

The South Korean electronics giant is reportedly discussing putting in as much as €1 billion as part of a broader fundraising round that could bring in several billion euros total. Samsung has backed Mistral before through its venture arm, so this would deepen a relationship that already exists rather than mark an entirely new bet.

Samsung would not be the only new name in the round. Swedish investor EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund, a vehicle backed by Brussels and managed by EQT, is also said to be in talks to participate, alongside private investors including Novo Holdings and Santander. Neither Samsung nor Mistral has commented publicly, and Reuters said it could not independently verify the FT's reporting.

The numbers mark a fast climb for Mistral. The company was valued at roughly €11.7 billion in an earlier round, and before that, raised 600 million euros in a Series B that valued it around 5.8 billion euros. If the new €20 billion figure holds, it would nearly double Mistral's valuation in a relatively short stretch, underscoring how much capital is chasing European AI right now, even as the company's valuation still trails well behind American rivals such as Anthropic.

The timing is notable. Mistral this week expanded its partnership with Microsoft, one of its earliest backers, which agreed to a multibillion dollar commitment to use Mistral's computing infrastructure in Europe. That deal is also expected to widen distribution of Mistral's technology and gives the startup a steadier revenue base it can borrow against as it keeps scaling. Earlier this year, in March, Mistral raised $830 million in its first debt financing, backed by a group of seven global banks, to help build a data center at Bruyeres le Chatel near Paris. That facility is being equipped with 13,800 Nvidia GB300 GPUs and 44 megawatts of powered capacity, and it is meant to handle both model training and inference work.

Mistral has built its identity around being Europe's homegrown alternative to the American and Chinese firms that dominate the AI race. It already supplies the French military, and it has leaned into the idea of technological sovereignty as governments across the region look for ways to reduce reliance on outside providers. That push has taken on new urgency after a US decision last month paused foreign access to two of Anthropic's advanced models, a move that rattled European buyers and made the case for local alternatives feel a lot less theoretical.

For Samsung, the talks fit into a broader pattern. In April, the company said it would consider investments and acquisitions where needed to speed up development and commercialization in robotics, while also partnering with local firms on technology. An AI stake of this size would extend that strategy well beyond hardware and into the software and model layer that increasingly shapes how consumer electronics and enterprise tools get built.

Nothing is finalized yet, and terms could still shift before any deal closes. But if the round comes together as described, it would be one of the largest single funding events in European AI to date, and a clear signal that global hardware players like Samsung see strategic value in owning a piece of the continent's AI infrastructure rather than just buying access to it.

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