Mistral AI, the French company behind the AI assistant Le Chat and several foundational models, is considered one of the most promising tech startups in France and is arguably the only European company capable of competing with OpenAI. Despite its $6 billion valuation, its global market share remains relatively low. However, the recent launch of its chat assistant on mobile app stores generated significant hype, particularly in its home country. French President Emmanuel Macron even endorsed Le Chat, urging people to download it instead of ChatGPT by OpenAI.

The attention surrounding Mistral AI is encouraging, but the company still faces challenges in competing with the likes of OpenAI while maintaining its self-definition as “the world’s greenest and leading independent AI lab.” The company has made significant strides in recent months, including the launch of its chat assistant Le Chat, which is now available on iOS and Android and has reached 1 million downloads in just two weeks.

What is Mistral AI?

Mistral AI was founded in 2023 with the ambition to “put frontier AI in the hands of everyone.” The company’s slogan emphasizes its commitment to openness in AI, which is seen as a direct challenge to OpenAI. Mistral AI’s alternative to ChatGPT, Le Chat, is a chat assistant that is now available on iOS and Android and has gained significant traction in recent months.

In July 2025, Mistral AI updated Le Chat with new features that bring it closer to rival full-stack AI chatbots, including a new “deep research” mode, native multilingual reasoning, and advanced image editing. The update also includes the addition of Projects, which allows users to group chats, documents, and ideas into focused spaces.

Mistral AI’s suite of models includes Mistral Large 2, Pixtral Large, Magistral, Mistral Medium 3, Voxtral, Devstral, Codestral, Les Ministraux, and Mistral Saba, among others. The company has also introduced Mistral OCR, an optical character recognition (OCR) API that can turn any PDF into a text file, making it easier for AI models to ingest.

• Mistral Large 2, the primary large language model replacing Mistral Large.
• Pixtral Large, unveiled in 2024 as a new addition to the Pixtral family of multimodal models.
• Magistral, its first family of reasoning models, launched in June 2025.
• Mistral Medium 3, released in May 2025 with the promise of providing efficiency without compromising performance, and best for coding and STEM tasks.
• Voxtral, Mistral’s first open source AI audio model, released in July 2025.
• Devstral, an AI model designed for coding and openly available under an Apache 2.0 license, meaning it can be used commercially without restriction.
• Codestral, an earlier generative AI model for code, but whose license banned commercial applications.
• “Les Ministraux,” a family of models optimized for edge devices such as phones.
• Mistral Saba, focused on Arabic language.

In March 2025, the company introduced the Mistral Agents API to empower enterprises to use AI in more practical and impactful ways. In June 2025, Mistral AI released a vibe coding client, Mistral Code, to compete with incumbents like Windsurf, Anysphere’s Cursor, and GitHub Copilot.

Who are Mistral AI’s founders?

Mistral AI’s three founders share a background in AI research at major U.S. tech companies with significant operations in Paris. CEO Arthur Mensch used to work at Google’s DeepMind, while CTO Timothée Lacroix and chief scientist officer Guillaume Lample are former Meta staffers. Co-founding advisers include Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve and Charles Gorintin from health insurance startup Alan, as well as former digital minister Cédric O.

Are Mistral AI’s models open source?

Not all of Mistral AI’s models are open source. The company differentiates its premier models, whose weights are not available for commercial purposes, from its free models, for which it provides weight access under the Apache 2.0 license. Free models include research models such as Mistral NeMo, which was built in collaboration with Nvidia and open-sourced in July 2024.

How does Mistral AI make money?

While many of Mistral AI’s offerings are free or have free tiers, the company plans to drive revenue from Le Chat’s paid tiers, including the Pro plan, which is priced at $14.99 a month. On the purely B2B side, Mistral AI monetizes its premier models through APIs with usage-based pricing. Enterprises can also license these models, and the company generates revenue from its strategic partnerships.

What partnerships has Mistral AI closed?

Mistral AI has entered into several strategic partnerships, including a deal with Microsoft that includes a strategic partnership for distributing its AI models through Microsoft’s Azure platform and a €15 million investment. The company has also partnered with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to let Chat query the AFP’s entire text archive dating back to 1983.

Other partners include France’s army and job agency, Luxembourg, shipping giant CMA, German defense tech startup Helsing, IBM, Orange, and Stellantis. In May 2025, Mistral AI announced it would participate in the creation of an AI Campus in the Paris region, as part of a joint venture with UAE-investment firm MGX, NVIDIA, and France’s state-owned investment bank Bpifrance.

How much funding has Mistral AI raised to date?

As of February 2025, Mistral AI has raised around €1 billion in capital, approximately $1.04 billion at the current exchange rate. This includes several equity financing rounds, including a record $112 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners in June 2023 and a Series A of €385 million led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) in December 2023.

In June 2024, Mistral AI raised €600 million in a mix of equity and debt, led by General Catalyst at a $6 billion valuation. The company is reportedly in talks to raise $1 billion in equity from investors, including Abu Dhabi’s MGX fund, as well as hundreds of millions of euros in debt.

How is Mistral AI approaching AI regulation?

Mistral AI’s CEO, Arthur Mensch, was part of a group of European CEOs who signed an open letter in July 2025 urging Brussels to “stop the clock” for two years before key obligations of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act enter into force. However, the European Commission is sticking to its original timeline.

What could a Mistral AI exit look like?

Mistral AI is “not for sale,” according to CEO Arthur Mensch, who stated that an IPO is the plan. Given the amount of funding the startup has raised, an acquisition may not provide high enough multiples for its investors. To justify its nearly $6 billion valuation, Mistral AI needs to scale its revenue to significant levels.

This story was originally published on February 28, 2025, and will be regularly updated.