Samsung Electronics announced the tie-up with Mistral AI during the South Korea-France state summit in Paris, and the chipmaker’s lead investment in the French startup’s Series D came in the same wave of announcements. The round raised €3B at a valuation above €21B, the largest equity fundraising ever completed by a European technology company, with EQT’s Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity joining as co-leads and ASML, NVIDIA, a16z and Bpifrance among existing backers.
Under the partnership, Samsung will run Mistral Large and related services inside its semiconductor operations as on-premises deployments, keeping sensitive process data within its own infrastructure. The company wants customized models for defect detection and equipment optimization across its advanced memory and logic lines, aiming to shorten development cycles, sharpen manufacturing precision and stabilize yields as process complexity grows.
Jun Young Hyun, vice chairman and CEO of Samsung’s Device Solutions division, said the rising complexity of AI chip design and manufacturing demands continuous innovation and cast Mistral as a partner for the AI era. Mistral co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch said the alliance would improve how chips are designed and produced.
Mistral, which pitches open-weight models as a sovereign alternative to US clouds, says it operates in 20 countries and supports more than 125 enterprises including Airbus, ASML and HSBC. Samsung’s stake follows a Series C led by ASML, a sign that hardware giants are increasingly bankrolling the AI labs whose models they want inside their factories.
