Mistral, which raised\u00a0\u20ac1.7bn<\/a> in September led by Dutch chip equipment maker ASML, on Wednesday announced it would invest \u20ac1.2bn to build out new AI data centres in Sweden, its first such facility outside France.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are diversifying and spreading our capacity across Europe,\u201d Mensch said. \u201cEurope has realised that its dependency on US 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 US players.\u201d<\/p>\n Mistral is working with EcoDataCenter to build the facility, which will offer 23MW of computing power and come online next year. Mensch said Sweden was an attractive venue to host power-hungry AI<\/a> chips because energy there was \u201cboth low carbon and relatively cheap\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s actually quite a predictable business so there is a strong appetite for underwriting the infrastructure investment,\u201d he said, projecting that it would create more than \u20ac2bn in revenue over the next five years. <\/p>\n Mensch said readily available debt financing means Mistral would not need to float its business this year, even as US rivals OpenAI and Anthropic race to launch their initial public offerings. \u201cThis is definitely something we have in mind for the next few years,\u201d he said, to \u201cguarantee our independence down the line\u201d.<\/p>\n Mistral\u2019s rapid growth represents a marked turnaround<\/a> from early last year, when many in the tech industry had written off the start-up, which was founded in 2023, in an AI race dominated by US and Chinese companies.<\/p>\n But in recent months, concern has intensified in European boardrooms and capitals that US President Donald Trump\u2019s foreign policy could force a \u201ctech decoupling\u201d<\/a>. The EU today relies on overseas providers, most of them American, for more than 80 per cent of its digital services and infrastructure.<\/p>\n Mistral, which counts Microsoft and Nvidia among its corporate backers, has long claimed its ambitions are global, not just European. But its position as Europe\u2019s only homegrown developer of \u201cfrontier\u201d large language models, and early backing from French President Emmanuel Macron, has left it well positioned to capitalise on regional demand<\/a> for \u201csovereign\u201d AI providers.<\/p>\n It has expanded efforts to build and run its own AI data centres, instead of relying on US \u201chyperscalers\u201d such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google to take its products to market.<\/p>\n This \u201cvertical integration\u201d helps pay for chips that can train its next generation of models \u2014 running customer workloads by day and training new AI systems by night \u2014 as well as offering European customers comfort that their data is stored on local servers.<\/p>\n Providing sovereign AI infrastructure was \u201ctop of mind for everyone\u201d, Mensch said. <\/p>\n \u201cThere has been a narrative for Europe to build data centres otherwise you will be left out,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is important to realise is that it\u2019s not that useful [for nation states] to only deploy compute if you\u2019re only creating data centres for US hyperscalers.\u201d<\/p>\n Mistral\u2019s customers include ASML, TotalEnergies, HSBC<\/a> and several European governments including France, Germany, Luxembourg, Greece and Estonia. About 60 per cent of revenues come from Europe, with the rest from the US and Asia.<\/p>\n Even as OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT and Anthropic\u2019s Claude have rapidly become among the fastest-growing products in Silicon Valley history, Mensch said that many corporate customers had been \u201ca bit disappointed by off-the-shelf chatbots\u201d, which have struggled to bring a return on investment.<\/p>\n Recommended<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/https:\/\/d1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net\/production\/5951f44c-f0f5-49ce-950f-59de086f0f2c.jpg\")
The Mistral AI website. Its customers include ASML, TotalEnergies, HSBC and several European governments \u00a9 Gabby Jones\/Bloomberg<\/p>\n
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