Mistral AI, French company AI Chat and several basic models, is officially considered one of France’s most promising technology companies and is the only European company that can compete with Openai. But compared to its $ 6 billion value, its global market share is still relatively low.
However, the recent launch of the chat assistant in mobile app stores was somewhat hype, especially in their home country. “Go Download Le Chat, made by Mistral, rather than Openain chatgpt -or something else,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a TV interview before the AI in Paris in February 2025.
Although this wave of attention can be encouraging, Mistral AI still faces challenges to compete with Openain-like and doing so, while keeping his or her own defining the world’s greenest and leading independent AI laboratory. “
What is Mistral ai?
Mistral AI has collected significant amounts of funding since it was created in 2023 in an endeavor to “put Frontier ai in everyone’s hands”. Although this is not a direct Jab Openai, slogans are intended to emphasize the defense of the openness of the company AI.
Its option for chatgpt, chat Assistant Le Chat, is now also available at iOS and Android. It achieved a million charges two weeks after its mobile device, even by grabbing France to the top of France for free for downloads in the iOS app store.
In July 2025, Mistral AI updated LE-chat programs with new features that bring it closer to the AI-chatbots of the competitor: a new “deep research” mode, native multilingual reasoning and advanced image editing. This update also includes adding projects, which allows users to allow group discussions, documents and ideas for concentrated spaces.
This is in addition to Mistral AI’s models that include:
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- Mistral Large 2, the primary large language model that replaces the Mistral large.
- PIXTRAL GreatIn 2024, a new addition was revealed to the PIXTRAL family of multimodal models.
- Magistral, its first family of reasoning models, was launched in June 2025.
- Mistral Medium 3, which was released in May 2025 with a promise to provide efficiency without compromising performance and best coding and stem tasks.
- Vxtral, Mistral’s first open source AI sound model, released in July 2025.
- Devstral, AI model designed for coding and openly available with an APACHE 2.0 license, which means that it can be commercially used without restrictions.
- Codestral, previous generative AI model for code, but the license was banned by commercial applications.
- “Les Ministraux”, a model family optimized for edge equipment such as phones.
- Mistral Saba, focused on Arabic.
In March 2025, the company introduced the Mistral OCR, the Optical Marking (OCR) application interface, which can convert any PDF to a text file to make the AI models easier.
May 2025 it published Mistral Agents API -with “Allow companies to use AI in more practical and impressive ways” According to the head of developer relationships, Sophia Yang.
In June 2025, Mistral AI also released a VIBE coding customer Mistral Code to compete with established operators such as Windsurf, Anysphear’s targeter and GitHub Copilot.
Who are the founders of Mistral AI?
The three founders of Mistral AI have a background in AI survey with major US technology companies with significant activities in Paris. CEO Arthur Mensch previously worked on Google’s Deepmind, while CTO Timothée Lacroix and researcher Guillaume Lample are former meta workers.
Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve (also board member) and Charles Gorint’s health insurance company, and former Digital Minister Cédric O, who has caused the former Digital Minister of Digital permanent dispute because of his previous role.
Are Mistral AI’s models an open source?
Not all of them. Mistrali ai distinguishes their main patterns whose weight Not available for commercial purposes, its free models, which offers weight gain with the APACHE 2.0 license.
Free models include research models such as Mistral Nemo, built in collaboration with NVIDIA that startup open In July 2024.
How does Mistral AI earn money?
Although many of Mistral AI’s offers are free or now free levels, Mistral AI intends to generate some income from Le Chat levels. The Le Chatin Pro plan introduced in February 2025 is priced at $ 14.99 per month.
On the purely B2B side, Mistral AI deserves primary models through application interfaces through use-based pricing. Businesses can also licenses these models, and the company is likely to produce a significant part of its strategic partnerships, some of which emphasized during the AI Summit in Paris.
However, according to several sources, Mistral AI’s net sales are still eight more numbers.
What partnerships are Mistral AI closed?
In 2024, Mistral AI signed an agreement with Microsoft, which included a strategic partnership for sharing Microsoft Azure and EUR 15 million. The Competition and Market Authority (CMA) in the United Kingdom quickly concluded that the trade did not receive research due to a small size. However, it raised some criticism In the EU.
In January 2025, Mistral AI signed the agreement with the press office’s Agency France-Presse (AFP) to give a chat survey to the AFP’s entire text archive from 1983.
Mistral AI also got strategic partnerships with France army and job– Luxembourg– ship giant cmaGerman defense technology startup Fucking– IBM– Orangeand Star.
Mistral AI announced in May 2025 that they will participate in creation AI campus in the Paris regionAs part of a joint venture with the United Arab Emirates investment company MGX, NVIDIA and the French state -owned investment bank.
In June 2025, it was announced that Mistral would launch a European platform and NVIDIA processors dedicated to AI from 2026, NVIDIA processors, NVIDIA processors Mistral. The initiative was Macron greeting “historical”who shared a phase with Mensch and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang at the Vivatech conference shortly after the announcement.
In July 2025 it announced Oh for citizens“The cooperation initiative helps states strategically harnessing states and public institutions to harness AI to people by changing public services, catalying up innovation and ensuring competitiveness.”
How much funding has Mistral AI have raised so far?
Starting February 2025, Mistral AI raised a capital of approximately EUR 1 billion so far, about $ 1.04 billion in the current exchange rate. This includes some debt funding and several capital funding rounds, which have been collected closely in a row.
In June 2023, and before it even released the first models, Mistral AI collected a record $ 112 million seed round led by the Lightspeed Venture Partners. The sources said at that time the seed round – Europe’s largest ever -The assess at the time for a month -old start of $ 260 million.
Other investors in this seed tour were Bpifrance, Eric Schmidt, Exor Ventures, First Minutes of the capital, title, JCDecaux Holding, La Famiglia, Localglobe, Motier Ventures, Rodolphe Saadé, Sofina and Xavier Niel.
Only six months later, it closed the A $ 385 million ($ 415 million at that time) in the series with $ 2 billion. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), participating in the existing Backer Lightspeed, as well as BNP Paribas, CMA-CGM, Compartment, Elad Gil, General Catalyst and Salesforce.
The $ 16.3 million convertible bond made by Mistral AI as part of their partnership, which was announced in February 2024, was presented for the continuation of the A series, which meant unchanging appreciation.
In June 2024, Mistral AI then raised EUR 600 million in a blend of equity and debt (about $ 640 million in exchange rate at that time). The long -term round was led by General Catalyst with $ 6 billion, and significant investors, including Cisco, IBM, NVIDIA, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation and others.
Mistral AI has now been announced in the negotiations to raise a $ 1 billion capital from investors, including the Abu Dhabi MGX Fund, owes hundreds of millions of euros in debt.
How does Mistral AI approach the AI setting?
Mensch was part of a group of European CEOs signed an open letter In July 2025 for Brussels ‘Stop the clock’ Two years before the main obligations of the EU Artificial Law on Artificial Intelligence will enter into force. The European Commission is caught on its original timeline.
What could the exit of Mistral AI look like?
Mistral is not “for sale”, Mensch said in January 2025 at the Davos World Economic Forum. “Plan (IPO is).”
This makes sense, given how much the startup has collected so far: even high sales may not offer enough odds for investors, not to mention sovereign concerns, according to the acquirer.
The only way to absolutely break constant purchasing rumors – lately Apple naming – It is to measure their income to levels that could even justify their valuation of nearly $ 6 billion. Anyway, stay tuned.
This story was originally published on February 28, 2025 and will be updated regularly.
