The post Mistral Is Now Worth $6 Billion, Drawing Fresh Cash Amid Open-Source AI Boom appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

AI startup Mistral has closed a substantial €600 million (about $644 million) funding round, the Paris-based firm announced on Tuesday. The fundraise was reportedly based on a company valuation of $6 billion—a nearly threefold increase from its $2 billion valuation in less than six months. “Mistral AI has grown about 3x in valuation since December and about 25x in the last 12 months,” Mistral AI researcher Devendra Chaplot wrote on LinkedIn—adding that the company is hiring. The Series B fundraising round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from notable investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, Salesforce Ventures, Cisco, and IBM. “We are grateful to our new and existing investors for their continued confidence and support for our global expansion,” Arthur Mensch, CEO and cofounder of Mistral AI tweeted. “This will accelerate our roadmap as we continue to bring frontier AI into everyone’s hands.” We are announcing €600M in Series B funding for our first anniversary.  We are grateful to our new and existing investors for their continued confidence and support for our global expansion. This will accelerate our roadmap as we continue to bring frontier AI into everyone’s… — Arthur Mensch (@arthurmensch) June 11, 2024 The cash infusion could make Mistral the world’s most valuable open-source AI company and the fourth largest AI company in general, behind only OpenAI, Anthropic and Databricks. The company was founded in April 2023 by a team that included former employees of Meta and Google’s DeepMind AI project. In announcing the fundraise, Mensch emphasized the capital-intensive nature of the industry, citing the need for increased computing power and talent acquisition to “break the barriers of artificial intelligence.” The capital will accelerate the company’s roadmap, enhancing computing capacity, recruitment efforts, and global expansion plans—particularly in the United States, he…

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Filed under: News - @ June 12, 2024 7:18 pm