ASML is putting another 400 million euros on the table for the French company Mistral AI. The Dutch chip equipment manufacturer is participating in a 3-billion-euro investment round led by Samsung. With this move, ASML maintains its stake of approximately 11 percent.
The Eindhovens Dagblad reports that ASML participated in Mistral’s new funding round. With its 400 million euro investment, the chip equipment manufacturer retains roughly the same stake in the French AI company, thereby avoiding dilution of its stake.
Mistral itself confirms in a press release that it has raised a total of 3 billion euros. Samsung is leading the round, though neither party disclosed exactly how much the South Korean tech giant is contributing. The company’s valuation now stands at 21 billion euros. The EU’s Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity also acted as co-leads. This appears to be the largest equity financing round ever for a European technology company.
Second round in a short time
Last year, ASML led a 1.7 billion euro funding round with a 1.3 billion euro investment of its own, becoming Mistral’s largest shareholder. At that time, Mistral was valued at approximately 10 billion euros. As part of that deal, ASML also secured a seat on the Strategic Committee, and both parties agreed to integrate Mistral’s models into ASML’s production line and broader business processes, including R&D.
In addition, Mistral had already raised three-quarters of a billion euros earlier this year to expand its AI infrastructure.
Computing power within the EU
The new capital will go toward research, additional computing power, and infrastructure expansion. Mistral is building data centers in Europe to ensure that customer data remains within the EU. The first site is located at Eclairion in Bruyères-le-Châtel, with an initial capacity of approximately 40 MW and room to grow to 100 MW.
The company positions itself as a provider of sovereign AI models. Nevertheless, like many other AI players, Mistral is heavily dependent on Nvidia. It also lags significantly behind its American and Chinese competitors when it comes to publicly available LLMs.