French AI startup Mistral AI has secured $830 million in debt financing to expand its first data center near Paris. The funds will finance the acquisition of 13,800 Nvidia GPUs, lifting the site’s capacity to 44 megawatts.
Lenders include French banks Bpifrance, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole CIB, Natixis CIB, and La Banque Postale, alongside HSBC and MUFG. The Essonne facility, south of Paris and operational since February 2025, is set to go live within three months for model training and customer services.
Mistral eyes 200 MW of capacity across Europe by end-2027. Plans feature new sites in Sweden and a 1.4 GW AI campus joint venture with MGX, Bpifrance, and Nvidia.
Since its 2023 founding, Mistral has developed open-source AI models and amassed nearly €2.8 billion in total funding. It hit an €11.7 billion valuation last year. CEO Arthur Mensch stressed the financing’s role in scaling infrastructure for customer independence and European AI progress.
The deal arrives as AI infrastructure competition heats up, with U.S. firms like OpenAI rethinking chip strategies. For Mistral, it advances efforts to build sovereign compute resources in Europe.
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