Mistral is the French AI startup behind popular open source models including Mistral-7B, Mixtral, and Codestral, and has received backing from the likes of Nvidia, Cisco, and IBM.
Ahead of the next AI Safety Summit taking place in Paris, Mistral announced it plans to build a state-of-the-art data centre in Essonne to the south of the city to power its AI model efforts.
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Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO of Mistral, described the news as a “huge milestone” for the startup, adding: “With our entrepreneurs, investors, and policy-makers partners, we're making Europe ready to build the infrastructure needed to compete in the global AI race.”
The proposed ‘home base’ for Mistral will be used to power the startup’s research efforts and will be fully powered by decarbonised energy.
Mensch told French outlet Le Parisien that the site will be operational “in the next few months,” and the data centre will represent an investment of several billions of euros.
The startup said the facility will help strengthen its independence. Mistral’s central philosophy is developing AI models that are open source and available to everyone, countering the closed-system approach of market titans OpenAI and Anthropic.
Mistral has raised more than USD$1 billion, most recently securing €600 million (USD$645 million) in a funding round led by General Catalyst, the investment firm that's previously backed Anthropic, Deliveroo, and Airbnb.
The announcement came as world leaders gather in the French capital for the AI Action Summit, the latest in a series of global events discussing governance for AI technologies.
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