Paris-based AI Startup Mistral AI Raises $640M in Series B Funding

Breaking Down the Funding Round: Mistral AI's Journey and Ambitions: Founded by former members of Meta and Google's DeepMind, Mistral AI has quickly established itself as a formidable player in the artificial intelligence industry. With a vision to rival the best-performing models, such as OpenAI's GPT-4o and Anthropic's Claude 3, the company focuses on developing foundational models that push the boundaries of AI capabilities. Open Source License and Proprietary Models: Mistral AI has made significant contributions to the AI community by releasing pre-trained and fine-tuned models under an open-source license. Models like Mistral 7B, Mistral 8x7B, and Mistral 8x22B are available with no restrictions on use or reproduction. However, the company also offers proprietary models, like Mistral Large, which can be accessed through an API-based product. Additionally, Mistral AI provides a free-to-use chat assistant called Le Chat and has formed distribution partnerships with leading cloud providers like Microsoft Azure. Investors and Financial Backing: General Catalyst, an existing investor, led the Series B funding round. The Financial Times reports that Mistral AI raised €468 million in equity and €132 million in debt, with a long list of investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, and Salesforce Ventures. Other notable investors include Belfius, Bertelsmann Investment, Cisco, IBM, and ServiceNow, among others.

As Mistral AI continues to make strides in the AI landscape, it will be interesting to see how the company attracts corporate customers and transforms its engineering achievements into revenue-generating opportunities.