Samsung Electronics is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of euros in the French AI startup Mistral. This funding will help Mistral build competitiveness in the market and develop mainstream artificial intelligence solutions that can rival those of U.S. technology giants. According to sources, after this round of funding, Mistral's valuation is expected to reach around 20 billion euros.

The investment by Samsung is expected to be 1 billion euros, and the company had previously invested in Mistral through its venture capital division. The negotiations reflect a major trend currently facing the industry, which is the sharp increase in demand for computing power, while the corresponding computing resources remain in short supply. Therefore, more and more AI development companies are seeking partnerships with semiconductor suppliers to meet market demand.

In this context, Mistral has taken advantage of the opportunity to attract financial support from various sources. Especially in the case where the U.S. government has banned foreign entities from obtaining Anthropic's latest AI models, European and Asian companies and governments are increasingly eager to reduce their reliance on U.S. AI technology. Mistral focuses on open-source AI models, allowing customers to customize the models, thus avoiding the risk of being remotely shut down by enterprises or governments.

Mistral's funding plan also includes the Scaleup Europe Fund under EQT, a Swedish institution, which has received support from the European Commission and is committed to supporting promising European companies. Mistral's collaboration with Samsung will take place in an environment where the AI industry is facing a shortage of chips. Recently, a U.S. memory manufacturer, Micron, has reached a partnership with Anthropic, while Mistral is also expanding its cooperation with early investor Microsoft, which has committed to investing "billions of dollars" to purchase Mistral's computing infrastructure services.