PARIS — It’s not every AI company that can count the French president as its top salesman. On June 11, 2025, the founder of French AI company Mistral took to the stage alongside Jensen Huang, the powerful CEO of chip giant Nvidia, to announce a partnership between the two companies. As President Emmanuel Macron joined them, the Taiwanese-American executive turned to Mistral’s young CEO Arthur Mensch and said something just audible to the Parisian audience of techies and public officials: “Your president worked really hard for you.” The Nvidia boss was referring to the deal his company had just sealed with Mistral to roll out AI infrastructure across Europe.
President said to me: ‘Which ones? Let me call them!’” Huang said. By the time the deal was official, the companies could announce that BNP Paribas, Orange, SNCF and Thales had all expressed interest in the partnership — boosting Mistral’s official entry into the global race for computing power.
Even for the head of Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, such presidential proactivity was remarkable, illustrating the French government’s dedication to championing its homegrown startup and showing how Mistral has leveraged ties to the executive branch in Paris to try and reach the level of some of the biggest generative AI companies. Mistral’s rise over the past three years, according to a dozen public officials and representatives of France’s tech ecosystem interviewed by POLITICO, owes much to the privileged relationship it built with Macron — enabling the company to secure both strong ties with the French state and a seat at the table with the world’s leading AI companies. Now, with a French presidential election bringing to a close Macron’s two-term reign, details on the depth of that relationship — many of which are reported here for the first time — also raise questions about Mistral’s future under a different president.
The company on Tuesday announced a new €3 billion funding round including investments from the European Union and South Korea’s electronics giant Samsung, valuing Mistral at more than €21 billion. While that falls well short of the valuations of Anthropic and OpenAI, the news confirms the French startup as the only serious European player in the AI race. As Europe questions its ability to challenge Chinese and American tech giants, Mensch and his team must now plan for life after Macron.
Launched in 2023 by three co-founders — Mensch, Guillaume Lample and Timothée Lacroix — Mistral AI set out to build a full-fledged large-language model to compete with the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. To do so, the Paris-based startup put forward a clear strategy from day one: cultivate a relationship with the French executive, and Macron in particular. From its first funding round, the startup — which declined to respond to questions for this article — made a point of forging ties with the public sector.
First among them was Bpifrance, France’s public investment bank and one of its earliest investors. But Caudoux noted: “There were a lot of fairy godmothers around the cradle.” Those looking out for the startup came from the cream of French business and tech, playing crucial roles as matchmakers, patrons and fundraisers. They included telecom billionaire Xavier Niel, as well as Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve and Charles Gorintin, co-founders of insurance startup Alan.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
