Samsung joins Mistral's forming €20B Series D with €1B bet

What's the deal? SamsungDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → is in talks to invest around €1 billion in French AI startup Mistral, according to the Financial Times — the latest name to surface in the company's forming ~€20 billion Series D. The South Korean conglomerate had previously backed Mistral through its venture arm.

How the round is taking shape: The Series D has been building for weeks. Swedish investment firm EQTDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → is set to lead — or co-lead — via the EU's €5B Scaleup Europe Fund, which would mark that public-backed superfund's first-ever investment. Mistral is raising around €3 billion at a valuation of roughly €20 billion, nearly double the €11.7B it reached in September 2025 when ASML led its €1.7B Series C. Samsung's €1B would slot in alongside that European public-capital anchor as a strategic corporate backer.

Why now? Samsung is the world's largest maker of memory chips, and its interest surfaced one day after it launched a new robotics unit — signalling a broader push to embed AI across its hardware businesses. The talks reflect a wider race by AI developers to lock in semiconductor partners as demand for compute far outstrips supply. On Mistral's cap table, a chipmaker like Samsung would sit naturally beside chip-equipment maker ASML.

What's the endgame? Mistral, founded in 2023 as a European alternative to OpenAI and AnthropicDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, is burning cash to keep pace: it is on track to pass €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 European compute by 2030. Owning the compute, not just the models, is the strategy — and a €20 billion valuation would cement its status as Europe's leading AI contender.

Read more: Financial Times · Tech Funding News