ASML and Mistral sealed a significant €1.3 billion AI partnership in Europe
In a significant move for the European tech industry, Dutch chip equipment giant ASML has announced a €1.3bn investment in French artificial intelligence start-up Mistral. This investment values Mistral at nearly €12bn, including the new funds raised.
Since its launch in June 2023, Mistral has secured lucrative contracts with large customers, totaling €1.4bn. Just over half of its business comes from Europe, with customers including automotive group Stellantis, French shipping group CMA CGM, and several French government departments.
The tie-up between ASML and Mistral aims to help develop Mistral's systems' capabilities beyond the same generic functions offered by rivals. ASML will begin using Mistral's AI expertise to help develop new chipmaking tools and offer customers new capabilities as they use its existing systems.
ASML's chipmaking equipment can cost hundreds of millions of euros and contain as many as 100,000 parts. The partnership bridging the gap between the semiconductor value chain and the artificial intelligence value chain also involves Carl Zeiss, Trumpf, Nvidia, and TSMC, among others. ASML provides EUV lithography machines for advanced semiconductors, Carl Zeiss supplies ultraprecise mirrors, Trumpf contributes high-performance lasers, Mistral AI develops AI models and compute platforms with Nvidia, and TSMC collaborates on high-tech AI chip development with the Technical University of Munich.
Mistral faces growing competition from Chinese players DeepSeek and Alibaba in the "open source" AI systems market. However, Mistral differentiates itself by focusing more on partnering with technological companies rather than the mass-market consumer side, as stated by its CEO, Arthur Mensch.
Mensch also emphasized the importance of European companies not having too much dependency on US technology. The alliance between ASML and Mistral brings together Europe's top AI start-up and one of the continent's most valuable public companies.
The investment by ASML makes it Mistral's biggest shareholder. Mistral, like US data analytics provider Palantir, sends "solutions architects" to consult with each customer on bespoke AI systems to secure contracts. The annual value of contracts secured by Mistral now exceeds €300mn.
In addition to the investment, Mistral is also raising new capital from existing investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Bpifrance, General Catalyst, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, and Nvidia. The partnership between ASML and Mistral hints at broader ambitions for the future, potentially bridging the gap between the semiconductor value chain and the AI value chain.
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