French artificial-intelligence startup Mistral AI said it had raised $3.48 billion from a pool of existing investors such as Samsung and ASML Holding, as well as new backers, pushing its valuation above $24 billion. The funding round underscores intense investor appetite for European AI champions competing with U.S. rivals. Mistral, founded by former Meta and Google DeepMind researchers, has positioned itself as a leading developer of open-weight large language models.

The capital infusion will accelerate compute capacity and commercial deployment across enterprise and consumer applications. Existing shareholders, including Nvidia and Salesforce Ventures, participated alongside new institutional investors. The deal marks one of the largest private funding rounds for a European tech company, signaling confidence in Mistral's roadmap despite regulatory headwinds in the EU.