Samsung ведёт переговоры о вложении до €1 млрд в Mistral — оценка вырастет до €20 млрд

Samsung is in talks in 2026 about investing up to €1 billion in the French AI startup Mistral AI — the deal would raise the company's valuation to roughly €20 billion.

How much Samsung is ready to invest

Samsung is discussing an investment of up to €1 billion in Mistral AI, and at such a round the startup's valuation would reach about €20 billion. According to The Decoder, the negotiations are not yet finalized, and the final terms and amount may still change. For Mistral, this would be one of the largest rounds in the company's history and a sharp jump in valuation just a few years after launch.

*Investor — Samsung

*Deal target — Mistral AI, headquartered in Paris, founded in 2023

*Amount — up to €1 billion

*Post-money valuation — about €20 billion

*Status — negotiations (according to The Decoder)

Samsung is in talks to invest up to one billion euros in the

French startup Mistral, which would raise the company's valuation to roughly 20 billion euros.

— as reported by The Decoder

Why Samsung wants this

Through a deal with Mistral, Samsung gains direct access to cutting-edge language models without depending entirely on OpenAI and Google. The South Korean corporation has been building its own AI infrastructure for several years now: it produces memory chips, including HBM for AI accelerators, and embeds generative features into devices in the Galaxy lineup. A stake in an independent model lab adds a software component to that hardware — its own source of models, not just a platform for other companies' ones.

A €1 billion bet is large even for Samsung, and it shows a major shift: device makers no longer want to remain merely "hardware" on top of other companies' models. For Samsung, this is also a competitive response: Apple, Google, and Chinese vendors are actively expanding AI directly on smartphones, and having its own access to a strong model reduces dependence on rival partners. Control over the model itself is becoming as strategic an asset as control over chip production.

Who Mistral is

Mistral AI is a French startup founded in 2023 in Paris by alumni of Google DeepMind and Meta, and one of the few European competitors to OpenAI and Anthropic. The company is known for open-weight models that can be downloaded and run on one's own infrastructure, as well as for its assistant Le Chat. The Decoder calls Mistral "Europe's hottest AI startup."

Mistral's valuation has grown rapidly. In just a couple of years, the company went from an early-stage startup to a contender with a double-digit-billion valuation, raising capital including from strategic investors. A round with Samsung at a valuation of about €20 billion would cement Mistral's status as Europe's AI champion. In France and the EU, the startup is seen as a symbol of technological sovereignty — a way to avoid ceding the generative AI market entirely to American and Chinese companies.

What this means

Major electronics makers are entering the AI race not only with chips but also with stakes in model labs. Samsung's talks with Mistral are a signal that Europe retains its own center of power in AI, and that direct access to cutting-edge models is turning into a strategic resource on par with control over supply chains. If the €1 billion deal closes, it will become one of the largest investments by an Asian tech giant in a European AI lab and will strengthen Mistral's position as a key player outside the US and China.

For the market, this is yet another confirmation: demand for independent models is turning the best AI labs into an object of competition among the world's largest corporations.

*Meta is recognized as an extremist organization and is banned in Russia.