French AI startup Mistral secures $640M funding at $6B valuation
What's the story
Mistral AI, a Paris-based startup, has successfully concluded its Series B funding round, with General Catalyst leading the way.
The company has raised $640 million in a combination of equity and debt.
This latest funding has propelled Mistral AI's valuation to an impressive $6B, marking a significant increase from its previous valuation of $1.5B in 2023.
The startup is a relatively new player in the artificial intelligence sector, having raised a substantial $112 million seed round just a year ago.
Company objective
Mistral AI's ambitious goal to rival top AI models
Mistral AI, co-founded by former employees of Google's DeepMind and Meta, is dedicated to developing foundational models that can compete with leading AI models like GPT-4o, Claude 3, and Llama 3.
The company has also introduced pre-trained and fine-tuned models under an open-source license with open weights.
These include Mistral 7B, Mistral 8x7B, and Mistral 8x22B, which were released under the Apache 2.0 license.
Business model
Mistral AI's proprietary models and distribution partnerships
In addition to its open-source models, Mistral AI also offers proprietary models like Mistral Large, designed for commercial use.
The company's first generative AI model for code, Codestral, has a restrictive license due to its commercial potential.
Mistral AI provides Mistral Large through a paid API with usage-based pricing and offers a chat assistant called 'Le Chat' for free use.
The company has distribution partnerships with cloud providers, including Microsoft Azure.
Future outlook
Mistral AI's future plans and investor support
Mistral AI's co-founder and CEO, Arthur Mensch, expressed his excitement about the new funding round, stating that it positions the company uniquely to advance AI and make cutting-edge technology accessible to all.
The startup's Series B round was led by General Catalyst, an existing investor in the company.
Other investors in this round include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, NVIDIA, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, Salesforce Venture, and several others.