French generative artificial intelligence startup Mistral AI raised $3.5 billion in a Series D funding round, lifting its valuation to more than $24 billion, according to an announcement by the company. Samsung Electronics led the round, with participation from the Scaleup Europe Fund managed by EQT, along with existing investor PSG Equity.
The round comes about a year after the Series C round in which Mistral AI raised $2 billion at a valuation of $13.7 billion. This brings the company’s total funding since its founding in 2023 to $7.5 billion, while its new valuation is close to double its previous valuation.
An Exceptional Position in the Foundation Model Market
With this deal, Mistral AI maintains its position as Europe’s most valuable company among developers of foundational artificial intelligence models. According to the data cited in the report, seven private laboratories developing advanced models with valuations exceeding $20 billion are listed among Crunchbase’s unicorn companies, or eight when China’s ByteDance is included; the rest of these companies are based in the United States and China.
Mistral develops models for uses including text generation, code writing and document analysis, competing with U.S. companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. The company presents itself as an option that gives organizations greater control, allowing them to customize its models and run them on customers’ systems instead of relying entirely on an external cloud provider.
What Will the Round Fund?
Mistral said the new capital will help it expand its research into advanced models, increase its infrastructure, and accelerate its commercial growth and international expansion. The company currently operates in 20 countries and has a customer base of more than 125 global organizations, including Airbus, ASML, BMW and HSBC.
The source does not specify how the funding will be allocated among research, infrastructure and commercial expansion, nor does it provide details about any investor’s stake or the terms of the deal. Therefore, the announcement establishes the round’s size, the valuation and the general plans for using the funds, but it does not disclose the level of operating expenditure or the timetable for achieving this expansion.
A Broader Context for European Funding
The round comes amid growing momentum for funding European startups. European startups raised $24 billion during the second quarter, an increase of nearly one-third compared with the previous quarter and a rise of two-thirds from $14.4 billion in the second quarter of 2025, according to Crunchbase data.
Mistral’s new round also surpassed the previous record set by the company’s own Series C round. The same year saw other major rounds, including Isomorphic Labs, a London-based company spun out of Google, raising $2.1 billion in a Series B round, and AI-focused data center company Nscale raising $2 billion in a Series C round at a valuation of $14.6 billion.
certi.news analysis: The real change here is not merely an increase in a startup’s valuation, but the shift of European AI funding toward rounds capable of competing with the largest global deals. Samsung’s participation gives the round an industrial dimension, but the source alone does not establish whether the funding will change Mistral’s competitive position against U.S. companies or expand organizations’ adoption of its models.