EQT's €5B Scaleup Europe Fund in talks to lead Mistral's €20B Series D
What's the deal? Swedish investment firm EQTDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → is set to lead — or co-lead — Mistral AI's Series D via its new Scaleup Europe Fund, according to a Sifted exclusive citing three sources with direct knowledge of the deal (July 2026).
The round: Mistral is raising around €3B ($3.5B) at a valuation of roughly €20B — nearly double the €11.7B it reached in September 2025, when Dutch chip-equipment maker ASML led its €1.7B Series C, investing €1.3B for an ~11% stake to become the company's largest shareholder.
The fund: Earlier in 2026, EQT was picked to manage the EU's €5B Scaleup Europe Fund, backed by the European Investment Bank. If the Mistral deal completes, it would mark the superfund's first investment — channelling European public-backed capital into the continent's flagship sovereign-AI champion.
Why Mistral needs it: Founded in 2023 as a European alternative to OpenAI and AnthropicDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Mistral is burning cash to keep pace. It is on track to surpass €1B of ARR in 2026, raised $830M in debt earlier in the year to build owned data centres, and is targeting up to 1 gigawatt of compute capacity in Europe by 2030 — including a major site near Paris and a €1.2B build-out in Sweden. Owning the compute, not just the models, is the strategy.
Read more: Sifted · TechCrunch · Seb Johnson (LinkedIn)
