Mistral AI raises €600 million

Mistral AI , the Paris-based OpenAI competitor, has raised €468 million in equity and €132 million in debt at a valuation of ~€6 billion.

The round was led by General Catalyst, and includes participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, Salesforce Ventures, Belfius , Bertelsmann Investment, BNP Paribas, Bpifrance, Cisco, Eurazeo, Headline, Hanwha Asset Management’s venture fund, IBM, Korelya Capital, Latitude, Millennium New Horizons, Sanabil Investments, ServiceNow and SV Angel.

Founded in 2023 by former employees of Meta and Google, Mistral builds open source large language models — the same generative AI technology that powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The startup will use the proceeds to add computing capacity, recruit workers and expand its international presence, particularly in the US.