Mistral Pushes EU AI Freedom as Revenues Top $400 Million
French AI startup Mistral says its revenues have jumped 20-fold in the last year.
Co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch told the Financial Times (FT) Wednesday (Feb. 11) that the company’s annualized revenue run rate — a figure based on the prior month’s sales multiplied by 12 — was “north of $400 million,” versus $20 million a year ago.
His comments came as Mistral announced plans to invest $1.4 billion to construct new data centers in Sweden, marking the company’s first facility of that kind outside its home country.
“We are diversifying and spreading our capacity across Europe,” Mensch said. “Europe has realized that its dependency on U.S. digital services was excessive and at breaking point today. We bring them leverage because we bring them models, software and compute that is fully independent from U.S. players.”
The report notes Mistral’s base of large enterprise customers now exceeds 100 companies. As covered here last year, the startup has formed partnerships with the likes of banking giant HSBC, and Stellantis, the carmaker behind Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, Fiat and Peugeot.
The CEO added that Mistral has easy access to debt financing, which means it won’t need to list the startup this year, something American rivals OpenAI and Anthropic are planning to do.
“This is definitely something we have in mind for the next few years,” he said, to “guarantee our independence down the line.”
The FT points out that this wish for independence is something felt by companies — and governments — across Europe over concerns about U.S. foreign policy. The European Union, the report added, relies on foreign companies, most of them in the U.S., for upwards of 80% of its digital services and infrastructure.
PYMNTS wrote about this trend at the start of the year, weeks after the U.S. once again threatened Europe with new fees, restrictions and market barriers in response to the rules and enforcement actions it views as disproportionately targeting American tech firms.
Even Great Britain, which is not a member of the EU, has faced the wrath of the White House. The Trump administration announced in December that it would suspend implementation of the U.S.-U.K. trade deal over England’s lack of progress in scaling back digital rules.
“The U.S. pressure has fueled Europe’s push to develop its own AI technology stack as an alternative to U.S. dominance, which could eventually begin to tell on the high-flying valuations of U.S. AI companies,” PYMNTS wrote.
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