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What is Mistral AI? Everything to know about the OpenAI competitor

What is Mistral AI?

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Who are Mistral AI’s founders?

Are Mistral AI’s models open

How does Mistral AI make money?

What partnerships has Mistral AI closed?

What enterprise features has Mistral AI developed?

How much funding has Mistral AI raised to date?

How is Mistral AI approaching AI regulation?

What could a Mistral AI exit look like?

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What is Mistral AI? Everything to know about the OpenAI competitor Anna Heim AM PDT · September 7, 2025 Mistral AI, the French company behind AI assistant Le Chat and several foundational models, is officially regarded as one of France’s most promising tech startups and is arguably the only European company that could compete with OpenAI.

It is reportedly in the process of raising another round that would value it at $14 billion, up from about $6 billion in June, 2024. While Mistral AI describes itself as “the world’s greenest and leading independent AI lab” it is still not as well known as its biggest competitors.  

“Go and download Le Chat, which is made

Mistral AI, which offers open-

Its alternative to ChatGPT, chat assistant Le Chat, is available on iOS and Android. It reached 1 million downloads in the two weeks following its mobile release, even grabbing France’s top spot for free downloads on the iOS App Store.

In July 2025, Mistral AI updated Le Chat with new features that bring it closer to rival full-stack AI chatbots: a new “deep research” mode, native multilingual reasoning, and advanced

As of September 2025, Le Chat also has the ability to remember previous conversations with the introduction of Memories.

Techcrunch event Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025 Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before Sept 26 to save up to $668. Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025 Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before Sept 26 to save up to $668. San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025 REGISTER NOW This comes in addition to Mistral AI’s suite of models, which includes: 

In March 2025, the company introduced Mistral OCR, an optical character recognition (OCR) API that can turn any PDF into a text file to make it easier for AI models to ingest.

In June 2025, Mistral AI also released a vibe coding client, Mistral Code, to compete with incumbents like Windsurf, Anysphere’s Cursor, and GitHub Copilot.

Mistral AI’s three founders share a background in AI research at major U.S. tech companies with significant operations in Paris. CEO Arthur Mensch used to work at Google’s DeepMind, while CTO Timothée Lacroix and chief scientist officer Guillaume Lample are former Meta

Co-founding advisers also include Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve (also a board member) and Charles Gorintin from health insurance startup Alan, as well as former digital minister Cédric O, which has caused persistent controversy due to his previous role.

Not all of them. Mistral AI differentiates its premier models, whose weights are not available for commercial purposes, from its free models, for which it provides weight access under the Apache 2.0 license.

Free models include research models such as Mistral NeMo, which was built in collaboration with Nvidia that the startup open

While many of Mistral AI’s offerings are free or now have free tiers, Le Chat also has paid tiers. Introduced in February 2025, Le Chat’s Pro plan is priced at $14.99 a month.

On the purely B2B side, Mistral AI monetizes its premier models through APIs with usage-based pricing. Enterprises can also license these models, and the company likely also generates a significant share of its revenue from its strategic partnerships, some of which it highlighted during the Paris AI Summit.

Overall, however, Mistral AI’s revenue is reportedly still in the eight-digit range, according to multiple

In 2024, Mistral AI entered a deal with Microsoft that included a strategic partnership for distributing its AI models through Microsoft’s Azure platform and a €15 million investment. The U.K.’s Competition and Markets

In January 2025, Mistral AI signed a deal with press agency Agence France-Presse (

Mistral AI also secured strategic partnerships with France’s army and job agency, Luxembourg, shipping giant CMA, German defense tech startup Helsing, IBM, Orange, and Stellantis.

In May 2025, Mistral AI announced it would participate in the creation of an AI Campus in the Paris region, as part of a joint venture with UAE-investment firm MGX, NVIDIA, and France’s state-owned investment bank Bpifrance.

In June 2025, it was announced that beginning in 2026, Mistral will launch a European platform dedicated to AI and powered

In July 2025, it announced AI for Citizens, “a collaborative initiative to help States and public institutions strategically harness AI for their people

In May 2025, Mistral AI released the Mistral Agents API to “empower enterprises to use AI in more practical and impactful ways,” according to its Head of Developer Relations, Sophia Yang.

In September 2025, the company unveiled a revamped Connectors directory, showcasing Le Chat’s integrations with some 20 enterprise tools including Asana, Atlassian, Box, Google Drive, Notion, Zapier, as well as emails and calendars; and soon, Databricks and Snowflake.

As of February 2025, Mistral AI raised around €1 billion in capital to date, approximately $1.04 billion at the current exchange rate. This includes some debt financing, as well as several equity financing rounds raised in close succession.

In June 2023, and before it even released its first models, Mistral AI raised a record $112 million seed round led

Other investors in this seed round included Bpifrance, Eric Schmidt, Exor Ventures, First Minute Capital, Headline, JCDecaux Holding, La Famiglia, LocalGlobe, Motier Ventures, Rodolphe Saadé, Sofina, and Xavier Niel.

Only six months later, it closed a Series A of €385 million ($415 million at the time), at a reported valuation of $2 billion. The round was led

The $16.3 million convertible investment that Microsoft made in Mistral AI as part of their partnership announced in February 2024 was presented as a Series A extension, implying an unchanged valuation.

In June 2024, Mistral AI then raised €600 million in a mix of equity and debt (around $640 million at the exchange rate at the time). The long-rumored round was led

According to Bloomberg, Mistral AI is now finalizing a €2 billion investment at a post-money valuation of $14 billion. This follows earlier reports that the company was in talks to raise $1 billion in equity from investors including Abu Dhabi’s MGX fund, as well as hundreds of millions of euros in debt. But

Mensch was part of a group of European CEOs who signed an open letter in July 2025 urging Brussels to ‘stop the clock’ for two years before key obligations of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act enter into force. The European Commision is sticking to its original timeline.

Mistral is “not for sale,” Mensch said in January 2025 at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “Of course, [an IPO is] the plan.” 

This makes sense, given how much the startup has raised so far: Even a large sale may not provide high enough multiples for its investors, not to mention sovereignty concerns depending on the acquirer. 

However, the only way to definitely squash persistent acquisition rumors — lately naming Apple — is to scale its revenue to levels that could even remotely justify its valuation. Either way, stay tuned.

This story was originally published on February 28, 2025 and will be regularly updated.

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Anna Heim Freelance

Anna Heim is a

You can contact or verify outreach from Anna

As a freelance

As of May 2025, her reporting for TechCrunch focuses on Europe’s most interesting startup stories.

Anna has moderated panels and conducted onstage interviews at industry events of all sizes, including major tech conferences such as TechCrunch Disrupt, 4YFN, South Summit, TNW Conference, VivaTech, and many more.

A former LATAM & Media Editor at The Next Web, startup founder and Sciences Po Paris alum, she’s fluent in multiple languages, including French, English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.

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