French start-up Mistral AI has a valuation of $2 billion

Mistral AI, founded by researchers from Google and Meta, has raised €385 million ($415 million) in its Series A funding round, valuing the company at an estimated $2 billion, according to Bloomberg. This significant funding round follows the company's successful seed round of $112 million in less than six months.

Mistral AI has been actively involved in shaping the discussions surrounding the EU's AI Act, advocating for a complete exemption for foundational models. The company argues that regulation should focus on use cases and businesses developing products that are directly used by end users.

The latest funding round is led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Lightspeed Venture Partners returning as an investor. Additional investors in the round include Salesforce, BNP Paribas, CMA-CGM, General Catalyst, Elad Gil, and Conviction.

Instead of providing its Mistral 7B model through APIs, Mistral AI opted to make it freely available for download, allowing developers to directly utilize its capabilities. The model is released under the Apache 2.0 license, an open-source license that permits unrestricted use and reproduction with only attribution. While anyone can run the model, it was developed under confidentiality using an undisclosed, proprietary dataset.

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