INDEX PERSPECTIVE
By Julia Andre
Strong relationships create their own serendipity. A few years ago, my colleague Jan Hammer and I were visiting the Paris HQ of Alan, the digital health insurance platform in which Index was an early investor. Alan’s CEO and co-founder, Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve, mentioned that he was incubating an open-source AI startup called Mistral a couple of floors below. After meeting his co-founder Arthur Mensch, we knew we had to be part of the journey.
Index invests in people as much as we invest in companies – which is why, after cutting that first seed check for Mistral, we’re thrilled to be continuing to support Arthur and the team in their latest funding round. At heart, Arthur is the kind of deeply technical engineer who could easily be building Mistral’s core models himself. Yet he’s shown himself to be talented at communicating Mistral’s bigger vision to customers, investors and policymakers. As a founder, it’s rare and incredibly powerful to be able to flip so fluidly between the close-up and the birds-eye view of your company.
That macro perspective is crucial as Mistral rides – and drives – a transformational wave in how businesses use AI. It’s no longer an experimental, ‘nice-to-have’ technology that employees are using ad-hoc; instead, we’re moving towards a world in which every major company will need to have a customized intelligence at its core. ASML’s decision to strategically partner with Mistral is a reflection of this. Mistral has shown impressive execution in building custom decentralized frontier AI solutions to solve the most complex engineering and industrial problems. More than simply selling cutting-edge models and LLMs, Mistral is en route to becoming the implementation partner of choice for enterprise – a one-stop shop for organizations putting AI to work at scale.
Mistral is the unquestioned AI leader being built out of Europe. Yet what excites us most is that it’s still early days. The enterprise AI market is just beginning to take shape, and Mistral’s success sets it up to be one of the big winners over the long term. We’re delighted to support them as they build the crucial AI infrastructure of tomorrow.
THE DETAILS
Mistral AI raises €1.7bn to accelerate technological progress with AI
Mistral announced a Series C funding round of €1.7bn at a €11.7bn post-money valuation. This investment fuels the company’s scientific research to keep pushing the frontier of AI to tackle the most critical and sophisticated technological challenges faced by strategic industries.
The Series C funding round is led by leading semiconductor equipment manufacturer, ASML Holding NV (ASML).
“ASML is proud to enter a strategic partnership with Mistral AI, and to be lead investor in this funding round. The collaboration between Mistral AI and ASML aims to generate clear benefits for ASML customers through innovative products and solutions enabled by AI, and will offer potential for joint research to address future opportunities.” said ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet.
For the last two years, Mistral has advanced AI through cutting-edge research and strategic partnerships with corporate and industrial champions. They will continue to develop custom decentralized frontier AI solutions that solve the most complex engineering and industrial problems. It powers enterprises, public sectors, and industries through state-of-the-art models, tailored solutions, and high-performance compute infrastructure.
“This investment brings together two technology leaders operating in the same value chain. We have the ambition to help ASML and its numerous partners solve current and future engineering challenges through AI, and ultimately to advance the full semiconductor and AI value chain”, said Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch.
Published — Sept. 9, 2025
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