OpenAI Competitor Mistral AI Raising At $6B Valuation

Paris-based Mistral AI is closing in on a huge new round that would value the OpenAI and Anthropic competitor at $6 billion, per a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Mistral is reportedly seeking to raise around $600 million from existing investors General Catalyst and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The new round would triple Mistral’s valuation from just last December when it raised approximately $415 million that would value the company at $2 billion, per a Bloomberg report. That round was reportedly led by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation from General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Bpifrance.

In addition, Mistral AI also has a number of strategic backers. Both Nvidia and Salesforce 1 reportedly contributed convertible debt to the December deal. In late February, it was announced Microsoft had invested about $16 million into the startup. Then in early March it was announced Databricks Ventures had invested an undisclosed amount.

Quick money

This is not the first time Mistral has wasted little time between raising rounds. The December raise came just six months after the startup — which is developing an open-source large language model — raised a seed round worth approximately $111 million led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The round is just the latest illustration of investors’ unending appetite for all things AI.

Despite some predictions of AI funding declining in 2024, funding to AI-related startups actually increased in Q1 2024 compared to Q4 2023, Crunchbase data shows.

The first quarter saw $12.2 billion invested in venture-backed AI startups in 1,166 deals. The dollar amount represents a modest 4% uptick from last year’s final quarter, which saw $11.7 billion go to similar startups in 1,072 deals.