French AI model developer Mistral AI has raised $830m in debt funding to increase capacity in its first data centre, as the startup accelerates efforts to build out infrastructure in Europe.
Launched in 2023 to develop European open-source models to rival US tech giants like OpenAI and Meta, Mistral expanded into AI infrastructure last year when it announced it would build data centres and provide compute power for its customers. The company pitches itself as a “sovereign” AI partner for enterprises in Europe.
Since launching nearly three years ago the startup has raised nearly €2.8bn and last year it hit an €11.7bn valuation.
The debt funding round was backed by French banks Bpifrance, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole CIB, Natixis CIB and La Banque Postale, British bank HSBC and Japanese bank MUFG.
Sovereign cloud
Since February 2025 Mistral has been building its first data centre in the south of Paris. The funding round will enable the startup to acquire 13.8k Nvidia GPUs, which will bring the site’s capacity to 44 megawatts (MW).
The data centre will power the training of Mistral’s own models as well as those of its customers, aiming to become operational in the next three months.
Earlier this year, the startup announced a $1.4bn investment in new data centres in Sweden. The objective is to secure 200 MW of capacity across Europe by the end of 2027, according to the company.
In May last year, Mistral also announced it was entering a joint venture with Abu Dhabi fund MGX, French public bank Bpifrance and Nvidia to develop an AI campus in France representing 1.4 gigawatt (GW) of compute power.
“Scaling our infrastructure in Europe is critical to empower our customers and to ensure AI innovation and autonomy remain at the heart of Europe”, said Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral AI, in a statement.
“We will continue to invest in this area, given the surging and sustained demand from governments, enterprises and research institutions seeking to build their own customised AI environment, rather than depend on third-party cloud providers.”
