Mistral AI
French artificial intelligence company founded in April 2023 by Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix. The company is known for developing high-performance open-source and proprietary large language models, including Mistral 7B, Mixtral 8x7B, and Codestral.
Overview
- Founded: April 2023
- Founders: Arthur Mensch (CEO), Guillaume Lample, Timothée Lacroix
- Headquarters: Paris, France
- Valuation: $14 billion (September 2025)
- Total Funding: $3.05 billion
- Main Products: Mistral 7B, Mixtral 8x7B, Mistral Large, Codestral
Founders Background
All three founders are former researchers from Meta and Google DeepMind:
- Arthur Mensch (CEO, born July 17, 1992): French AI researcher, one of Europe’s most prominent AI figures. By 2025, became a billionaire with net worth of approximately $1.1 billion.
- Guillaume Lample (34): Former Meta/Google researcher
- Timothée Lacroix (34): Former Meta/Google researcher
The three founders each became France’s first AI billionaires in September 2025 following the company’s Series C funding round.
Key Products & Models
Open-Source Models (Apache 2.0)
- Mistral 7B (September 2023): Most powerful 7B parameter model at launch, outperforming LLaMA 2 13B despite smaller size
- Mixtral 8x7B (December 2023): Sparse Mixture-of-Experts (SMoE) model outperforming LLaMA 2 70B with 6x faster inference, supports 32K context
- Mixtral 8x22B: Larger MoE variant
- Codestral Mamba: Code-focused model
- Mathstral: Mathematics-specialized model
Proprietary/Specialized Models
- Mistral Large 2 (July 2024): Top-tier 123B model performing on par with GPT-4o, Claude 3 Opus, and LLaMA 3.1 405B
- Mistral Nemo: General-purpose model
- Codestral 22B (May 2024): Code-centric model supporting 80+ programming languages with IDE integration (custom MNPL license)
- Embed: Specialized embedding model
Funding History
| Round | Date | Amount | Valuation | Lead Investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | June 2023 | €105M ($113M) | - | Lightspeed Venture Partners, Eric Schmidt, Xavier Niel |
| Series A | Dec 2023 | €385M ($415M) | $2B | Andreessen Horowitz, BNP Paribas, Salesforce |
| Series A Extension | Feb 2024 | €15M ($16M) | - | Microsoft |
| Series B | June 2024 | €600M ($645M) | $6.2B | General Catalyst, Cisco, IBM, Nvidia, Samsung, a16z |
| Series C | Sept 2025 | $2B | $14B | ASML, DST Global, a16z, Bpifrance, General Catalyst |
Notable: The June 2023 seed round of €105M remains the largest seed round in European history.
Key Milestones
- April 2023: Company founded
- June 2023: Raised largest European seed round (€105M)
- September 2023: Released Mistral 7B (open-source)
- December 2023: Released Mixtral 8x7B, raised $415M Series A
- February 2024: Microsoft partnership and investment
- May 2024: Released Codestral 22B
- June 2024: Series B (6.2B valuation
- July 2024: Released Mistral Large 2
- September 2025: Series C (14B valuation, founders become billionaires
- January 2025: CEO confirms company pursuing IPO, not for sale
Company Strategy
Mistral AI distinguishes itself through:
- Open-source commitment: Multiple models released under Apache 2.0 license
- European AI sovereignty: Positioned as Europe’s answer to American AI dominance
- Performance efficiency: Smaller models outperforming larger competitors
- Mixture-of-Experts architecture: Pioneering MoE for efficient scaling
- Multilingual focus: Strong support for European languages (French, German, Italian, Spanish)
Leadership Statements
CEO Arthur Mensch stated in January 2025 at Davos that Mistral AI is “not for sale” and is working toward an initial public offering (IPO), positioning the company as a long-term European AI champion.
Related
Models
Resources
- mistral-prompt-template
- open-source-llms