French artificial intelligence startup Mistral announced on Wednesday a planned investment of €1.2 billion (approximately $1.43 billion) in Sweden's digital infrastructure, which will include AI data centers.
This announcement comes as Europe intensifies efforts to build the infrastructure required to support rapidly developing AI tools, striving to establish technological sovereignty amid escalating geopolitical tensions.
Mistral stated the funds will be used to advance the construction of AI data centers, high-performance computing power, and localized AI capabilities.
Founded in 2023, Mistral has become one of Europe's leading AI companies. It completed a €1.7 billion funding round in September, reaching a valuation of €11.7 billion. Dutch chip equipment manufacturer ASML contributed €1.3 billion to that funding round.
The company's investors also include tech giants Nvidia and Microsoft, as well as venture capital firms DSTGlobal, Andreessen Horowitz, French public investment bank Bpifrance, General Catalyst, and Index Ventures.
Mistral's CEO, Arthur Mensch, said in a statement, "This investment is a tangible step towards Europe building its own autonomous AI capabilities."
"By offering a full-stack service for local data processing and storage, we are strengthening Europe's strategic autonomy and competitiveness," he added. "This lays the foundation for a European AI cloud that can serve businesses, public institutions, and researchers at scale."
Initially focused on developing large language models, the company has since expanded its operations into the underlying infrastructure required for AI.
In June of this year, the company launched its Mistral Compute service, which it claims provides a complete, integrated technology stack, including graphics processing units (GPUs), application programming interfaces (APIs), and a fully managed platform-as-a-service.
Nordic countries are considered ideal locations for building computing infrastructure in Europe due to their cool climates and some of the continent's lowest energy costs.
In July, OpenAI announced plans to build an AI data center in Norway as part of its "Stargate" project.
As part of this new investment, Mistral will partner with Swedish company Eco Data Center to deploy large-scale AI computing facilities. This marks the French startup's first AI infrastructure investment outside its home market.
The facility is scheduled to become operational in 2027 and will support the development and operation of Mistral's next-generation AI models.
According to data from deal tracking platform Dealroom, although Mistral is Europe's most-funded large language model developer, with total funding of $2.9 billion, it still trails well-funded US competitors.
Sources revealed this week that OpenAI is planning a funding round that could reach up to $100 billion, while Anthropic signed a term sheet for a $100 billion financing deal in January.