Mistral AI 是什么？关于这家 OpenAI 竞争对手的一切

在特朗普指令导致 Anthropic 将其最新 AI 模型下线以及越来越多要求发展主权技术以减少对美国依赖的呼声中，Mistral AI 被推到了聚光灯下的风口浪尖。然而，这家法国 AI 宠儿常常被误解，加上它开发大型语言模型（LLM）的背景，让情况更加扑朔迷离。

如果有人以“欧洲版 OpenAI”的标准来评判 Mistral，那注定会失望。它的聊天和智能体平台 Vibe，前身为 Le Chat，其品牌知名度仅有 ChatGPT 的零头，而 Claude 比 Mistral 的模型更受欢迎——即便是在巴黎初创园区 Station F 的创始人中也是如此。

另一方面，普通观察者往往会忽略，这家法国十角兽公司正遵循着 Palantir 的策略，派遣驻场工程师帮助政府和大企业采用 AI 并针对其特定用例进行定制。

这种路径也更符合 Mistral 的资源状况。尽管有传闻称公司正在以 231.5 亿美元的估值融资约 35 亿美元，估值几近翻倍，但这仍远低于美国前沿 AI 实验室。不过它的收入也在飙升；二月披露的年经常性收入（ARR）已超过 4 亿美元，而一年前仅为 2000 万美元，并声称今年 ARR 有望突破 10 亿美元。

这让 Mistral 得以在达沃斯等地拥有一席之地，甚至进入那些科技 CEO 很难传达信息的场合，比如法国议会。Mistral 首席执行官 Arthur Mensch 已成为某种 AI 愿景的公共大使，但在解释自家公司时，他仍有很多布道工作要做。

在一篇冗长的 LinkedIn 帖子中，Mensch 详细阐述了这家总部位于巴黎的公司到底“靠什么为生”——在其企业客户的基础设施上部署其模型与智能体平台，并利用 Forge 平台帮助客户利用自有数据训练定制模型。

然而，围绕 Mistral 的误解与更高期望并非空穴来风。这家以风命名的公司追求着一个宏大的愿景。Mensch 写道：“我们的存在，是为了确保每个人都能获得最好的 AI 系统，不受那些意图控制 AI 最终部署的国家或公司的集权控制。”

这一愿景意味着 Mistral 的目光并不局限于企业市场。它还致力于持续对研究进行大笔投入，以追赶基础 AI 模型领域的竞争对手——Mensch 的帖子也覆盖了他认为公司在这方面所处的位置。

Mensch 声称：“今天，我们尚未拥有最好的语言模型，但我们一直在不断缩小差距。今年夏天我们将推出一个非常令人激动的模型——它将采用开放权重，并且我们在七月开放了对其的早期访问。在那些较少受到算力限制的领域，例如语音、视觉和文档处理，我们已有最先进的解决方案。”

Mistral 即将推出的模型已在 X 平台引发热议，Mensch 与 Mistral 的支持者 Marc Andreessen 用玩笑互动，并放大了关于某个现在我们知道不会叫做 “Le Chaton Fat” 的模型的各种梗。这又一次表明，全世界——尤其是“世界其他地区”——都在紧盯着 Mistral 口袋里藏着的一切。

最有趣的部分可能正在幕后发生。今年早些时候，Mistral 收购了基础设施初创公司 Koyeb，以进一步推动其构建“真正的 AI 云”的计划。公司还宣布了一项40 亿欧元（约 45.6 亿美元）的投资战略，用于在法国和瑞典建设数据中心——而其中的主权意味始终若隐若现。

Mensch 写道：“我们的建设前提是，AI 技术是一种商品技术，每个组织都需要安全且负担得起的供应。”如果你好奇想了解更多，请继续阅读。

Mistral AI 的创始人是谁？

Mistral 的三位创始人有着在巴黎设有业务的美国大型科技公司从事 AI 研究的共同背景。在成为 Mistral CEO 之前，Mensch 曾在谷歌 DeepMind 工作；CTO Timothée Lacroix 与首席科学官 Guillaume Lample 是前 Meta 员工。

Mistral 还将联合创始顾问的头衔授予了健康保险初创公司 Alan 的联合创始人 Charles Gorintin 和 Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve（他也是董事会成员）。此外，公司最近任命了三位新高管以支持其增长：Johan Bergqvist 任首席财务官，Brian Hall 任首席营销官，Kamal Brar 任高级副总裁负责合作伙伴与联盟。

Mistral AI 的主要模型有哪些？

Mistral 开发了广泛的模型组合，覆盖从 LLM 到多模态、推理、音频和 OCR 模型。并非所有模型都强调参数规模；其命名就很有说明性：Mistral Small 4 以及“Les Ministraux”，这是一系列专为手机等边缘设备优化的模型家族。部分模型采用开放权重，并且它还将代码智能体 Leanstral 开源。

Mistral AI 达成了哪些合作伙伴关系？

2024 年，Mistral 与微软签署了一项协议，其中包括 1500 万欧元的投资，以及通过微软 Azure 平台分销其 AI 模型的战略合作伙伴关系。

2025 年 5 月，Mistral 宣布将参与在巴黎地区创建一个 AI 校园，这是与阿联酋投资公司 MGX、NVIDIA 及法国国有投资银行 Bpifrance 成立的合资企业的一部分。

2025 年 6 月，Mistral 宣布将于 2026 年推出一个由 NVIDIA 处理器驱动、专用于 AI 的欧洲平台——Mistral Compute。该计划被法国总统埃马纽埃尔·马克龙誉为“历史性的”，他在宣布后不久与 Mensch 和 NVIDIA CEO 黄仁勋在 VivaTech 大会上同台。

2025 年 7 月，Mistral 启动了 AI for Citizens 倡议，公司声称该倡议能“通过改造公共服务，帮助国家和公共机构为其人民战略性地利用 AI”。

2025 年 9 月，Mistral 与芯片公司 ASML 达成合作，“探索将 AI 模型应用于 ASML 的产品组合以及研发和运营中”。

Mistral 还与众多机构达成了战略合作，例如：Accenture、法新社、法国军方和就业机构、卢森堡、航运巨头 CMA、德国防务科技初创公司 Helsing、IBM、Orange 和 Stellantis。

Mistral AI 迄今已融资多少？

Mistral AI 至今的大部分融资是债务融资，但公司也完成了多轮风投融资，根据 Crunchbase 数据，总额约为 40 亿美元。

2023 年 6 月，成立仅一个月后，Mistral AI 就完成了由 Lightspeed Venture Partners 领投的创纪录的 1.13 亿美元种子轮融资。当时的消息来源称，这轮欧洲史上最大的种子轮对该初创公司的估值为 2.6 亿美元。

该轮其他投资者包括 Bpifrance、Eric Schmidt、Exor Ventures、First Minute Capital、Headline、JCDecaux Holding、La Famiglia、LocalGlobe、Motier Ventures、Rodolphe Saadé、Sofina 和 Xavier Niel。

六个月后，Mistral 完成了3.85 亿欧元（当时约合 4.15 亿美元）的 A 轮融资，据称估值为 20 亿美元。该轮由 Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) 领投，Lightspeed 以及 BNP Paribas、CMA-CGM、Conviction、Elad Gil、General Catalyst 和 Salesforce 参投。

微软作为 2024 年 2 月宣布的合作关系的一部分向 Mistral 进行的1630 万美元可转债投资，被视为 A 轮延展，意味着估值未变。

2024 年 6 月，Mistral 通过股权和债务混合方式融资 6 亿欧元（约合 6.4 亿美元）。这轮传闻已久的融资由 General Catalyst 领投，估值为 60 亿美元，知名投资者包括思科、IBM、NVIDIA 和三星风投等。

2025 年 9 月，Mistral 完成了由 ASML 领投的 17 亿欧元（约 20 亿美元）C 轮融资，估值 117 亿欧元（约 138 亿美元），现有支持者 DST Global、a16z、Bpifrance、General Catalyst、Index Ventures、Lightspeed 和 Nvidia 参投。

Mistral AI 收购了哪些公司？

除了基础设施初创公司 Koyeb，Mistral 还收购了 Emmi，这是一家专注于物理 AI 的奥地利初创公司，旨在更好地支持工业企业的 AI 转型。

Mistral AI 会自己制造芯片吗？

虽然 Mistral 尚未设计自己的芯片，但 Mensch 并未排除这种可能。他对 CNBC 表示：“拥有芯片可能提上日程，我认为未来某个时候是应该的，但目前我们依赖 NVIDIA，它是我们很好的合作伙伴，我们也会在一些地方做些测试。”

Mistral AI 可能的退出路径是怎样的？

Mistral “不卖”， Mensch 于 2025 年 1 月在达沃斯世界经济论坛上表示。“当然，[IPO 是]计划中的事。”

这合情合理，考虑到这家初创公司迄今已融资的规模：即便出售给一家像[苹果这样传闻中的潜在买家](

Following the Trump directive that led Anthropic to pull its latest AI models offline and growing calls for sovereign tech that reduces reliance on the U.S., Mistral AI has been caught in a whirlwind of attention. But the French AI darling is often misunderstood, and the fact that it develops large language models (LLMs) has muddied the picture.

Anyone who judges Mistral by how close it is to becoming ‘the OpenAI from Europe’ is in for disappointment. Its chat and agent Vibe, formerly Le Chat, only has an ounce of ChatGPT’s brand recognition, and Claude is more popular than Mistral’s models even among founders based at Station F, Paris’ startup campus.

On the other hand, casual observers tend to miss that the French decacorn is following the Palantir playbook, with forward-deployed engineers that help governments and large corporations adopt AI and tailor it for their use cases.

This approach is also better suited for Mistral’s means. While the company is rumored to be raising some $3.5 billion at a $23.15 billion valuation, nearly doubling its current valuation, that’s still far less than U.S. frontier labs. But its revenues have also ramped up; in February, it disclosed that its annual recurring revenue was now above $400 million, up from $20 million just one year earlier, and claimed it was on track to surpass $1 billion in ARR this year.

This has helped Mistral gain a seat at the table in places like Davos, and even in rooms where tech CEOs have a hard time getting their message across, such as the French Parliament. Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch has become a public ambassador for a certain vision of AI, but he still has some evangelizing to do when it comes to explaining his own company.

In a lengthy LinkedIn post, Mensch broke down what the Paris-based company has been doing “for a living” — deploying its models and agent platform on the infrastructure of its Enterprise customers, and helping them build custom models with Forge, a platform that lets them use their own data for training.

However, misunderstandings and bigger hopes around Mistral don’t stem out of thin air. Named after a wind, the company pursues a grand vision. “We exist to make sure that everyone gets access to the best AI systems, outside of centralized control exercised by states or corporations that feel the need to control in-fine deployment of AI,” Mensch wrote.

This vision means that Mistral is looking beyond the enterprise. It also aims to keep on making big investments into research to keep up with foundational AI rivals — and Mensch’s post also covered where he thinks the company stands in that regard.

“Today, we do not yet own the best language models, but we’ve constantly reduced that gap. We have a very exciting model to come this summer – it will be open-weight, and we’re opening early access to it in July. In domains that are less compute bound, e.g. voice, vision and document processing, we have state-of-the-art solutions,” Mensch claimed.

Mistral’s upcoming model has already generated some buzz on X, where Mensch and Mistral backer Marc Andreessen have engaged with jokes and amplified memes on what we now know won’t be called “Le Chaton Fat.” That’s another sign that the world — especially “the rest of the world” — is keeping an eye out for whatever Mistral has in its bag.

The most interesting part may be happening behind the scenes. Earlier this year, Mistral acquired infrastructure startup Koyeb to further boost its plans to build “a true AI cloud. The company also announced a €4 billion investment strategy (around $4.56 billion) to build data centers in France and Sweden — and the sovereignty undertones are never very far.

“We’re building under the premise that AI technology is a commodity technology that every organization needs a secured and affordable supply of,” Mensch wrote. If you are curious to learn more, keep on reading.

Who are Mistral AI’s founders?

Mistral’s three founders share a background in AI research at major U.S. tech companies that have operations in Paris. Before becoming Mistral’s CEO, Mensch used to work at Google’s DeepMind; CTO Timothée Lacroix and chief scientist officer Guillaume Lample are former Meta staffers.

Mistral also granted the title of co-founding advisers to the cofounders of health insurance startup Alan, Charles Gorintin and Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve (also a board member). In addition, it recently appointed three new executives to support its growth: Johan Bergqvist as Chief Financial Officer, Brian Hall as Chief Marketing Officer and Kamal Brar as SVP, Partners & Alliances.

What are Mistral AI’s main models?

Mistral has developed a broad suite of models ranging from LLMs to multimodal, reasoning, audio and OCR models. Not all of its models emphasize size; there’s the tellingly named Mistral Small 4 and “Les Ministraux,” a family of models optimized for edge devices such as phones. Some are open weights, and it also made code agent Leanstral open source.

What partnerships has Mistral AI closed?

In 2024, Mistral signed a deal with Microsoft that included a €15 million investment and a strategic partnership for distributing the French company’s AI models through Microsoft’s Azure platform.

In May 2025, Mistral said it would participate in the creation of an AI Campus in the Paris region, as part of a joint venture with UAE investment firm MGX, NVIDIA, and France’s state-owned investment bank Bpifrance.

In June 2025, Mistral said it would launch a European platform dedicated to AI and powered by Nvidia processors, Mistral Compute, in 2026. The initiative was hailed as “historic” by France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, who shared the stage with Mensch and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the VivaTech conference shortly after the announcement.

In July 2025, Mistral launched AI for Citizens, an initiative that the company claimed could “help States and public institutions strategically harness AI for their people by transforming public services.”

In September 2025, Mistral and chip company ASML struck a partnership “to explore the use of AI models across ASML’s product portfolio as well as research, development and operations.”

Mistral also secured strategic partnerships with the likes of Accenture, press agency Agence France-Presse, France’s army and job agency, Luxembourg, shipping giant CMA, German defense tech startup Helsing, IBM, Orange, and Stellantis.

How much funding has Mistral AI raised to date?

Most of Mistral AI’s funding to date was debt financing, but the company has also raised several venture funding rounds, with a grand total around $4 billion, according to Crunchbase.

In June 2023, just one month after being founded, Mistral AI raised a record $113 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Sources at the time said the seed round, Europe’s largest ever, valued the startup at $260 million.

Other investors in that round included Bpifrance, Eric Schmidt, Exor Ventures, First Minute Capital, Headline, JCDecaux Holding, La Famiglia, LocalGlobe, Motier Ventures, Rodolphe Saadé, Sofina, and Xavier Niel.

Six months later, Mistral closed a €385 million Series A ($415 million at the time), at a reported valuation of $2 billion. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and saw participation from Lightspeed, as well as BNP Paribas, CMA-CGM, Conviction, Elad Gil, General Catalyst, and Salesforce.

Microsoft’s $16.3 million convertible investment in Mistral as part of a partnership announced in February 2024 was presented as a Series A extension, implying an unchanged valuation.

In June 2024, Mistral raised €600 million (about $640 million) in a mix of equity and debt. The long-rumored round was led by General Catalyst at a $6 billion valuation, with notable investors including Cisco, IBM, Nvidia, and Samsung Venture Investment Corporation participating.

In September 2025, Mistral closed a €1.7 billion Series C round (about $2 billion) led by ASML at a €11.7 billion valuation (approximately $13.8 billion), with participation from existing backers DST Global, a16z, Bpifrance, General Catalyst, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, and Nvidia.

What companies has Mistral AI acquired?

In addition to infrastructure startup Koyeb, Mistral has also bought Emmi, an Austrian startup focusing on physics AI, with the ambition to better support industrial enterprises in their AI transformation.

Will Mistral AI make its own chips?

While Mistral has yet to design its own chips, Mensch isn’t ruling it out. “Owning the chips may come, I think it should come at some point, but for now we are relying on Nvidia, which is a great partner to us, and we’re testing a few things here and there,” he told CNBC.

What could a Mistral AI exit look like?

Mistral is “not for sale,” Mensch said in January 2025 at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “Of course, [an IPO is] the plan.”

This makes sense, given how much the startup has raised so far: Even a sale to a rumored prospective buyer like Apple may not provide high enough multiples for its investors, not to mention sovereignty concerns depending on the acquirer.

This story was originally published on February 28, 2025, and will be regularly updated****.