French AI startup Mistral announced on Tuesday it has raised 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) in fresh funding, primarily led by memory chip giant Samsung. This investment gives Mistral a post-money valuation of over 21 billion euros ($24 billion), up from 11.7 billion euros a year ago. The funding round also included the Scaleup Europe Fund and existing investor PSG Equity. Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch stated the capital will be used to build more infrastructure, including its own data centers, and to train larger, faster AI models, aiming for a 100% increase in compute capacity over the next five years. Mistral positions itself as a European alternative to rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic, focusing on open-weight AI models and custom AI tool integration for enterprises, with plans to deepen collaboration with Samsung in manufacturing AI integration, similar to its work with ASML.