Mistral AI’s Meteoric Rise: Inside the $14B Open-Source Gambit Challenging OpenAI
Mistral AI, founded in 2023 by former DeepMind and Meta researchers, reached a €11.7 billion valuation after raising €1.7 billion in September 2025 led by ASML. The Paris-based startup built its reputation by open-sourcing large language models, while keeping its most advanced models proprietary. Its chat assistant “Le Chat” surpassed 1 million downloads in two weeks. Mistral has signed enterprise deals with firms including NTT.
