ASML leads Mistral's €1.7B Series C

Mistral AI announced a Series C funding round of €1.7 billion at an €11.7 billion post-money valuation. The round is led by ASML Holding NV, the Dutch semiconductor equipment maker.

Existing investors also took part: DST Global, Andreessen Horowitz, Bpifrance, General Catalyst, Index Ventures, Lightspeed and NVIDIA.

The investment comes with a strategic partnership between the two companies. "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.

Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch described the deal as bringing together "two technology leaders operating in the same value chain," and said the company wants to help ASML and its partners "solve current and future engineering challenges through AI, and ultimately to advance the full semiconductor and AI value chain."

Mistral said the money will fund its scientific research and its work on "custom decentralized frontier AI solutions" for complex engineering and industrial problems. It plans to offer these to enterprises, the public sector and industry through its models, tailored solutions and high-performance compute infrastructure. The company also said the round "reaffirms" its independence.

The announcement does not give the size of ASML's stake, the allocation among investors, or details of the partnership's products, research scope or timeline.