Mistral, a Wannabe OpenAI of Europe, Seeks $300 Million

Mistral, an artificial intelligence startup founded by former Meta Platforms and Alphabet researchers, plans to raise an additional $300 million from investors just four months after raising $113 million in a seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

The round is expected to value the Paris-based startup, which is developing an open-source large language model and has framed itself as the “OpenAI of Europe,” at over $1 billion before the investment, according to another person. It’s unclear which VC firms Mistral has spoken to about investing. Andreessen Horowitz, one of the most active investors in generative AI, is currently seeking an investment in an open-source LLM developer, according to a person  familiar with the matter.