Mistral raises $830M for Nvidia-backed data centers, advancing Europe’s AI sovereignty

French AI start-up Mistral has successfully secured $830 million in debt financing to support the construction of Nvidia-backed AI data centers across Europe.

The hefty investment underscores the efforts of companies and governments, aiming to disentangle themselves from the US tech giants, such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft and seek “sovereign” European alternatives to these groups.

According to the CEO of Mistral, Arthur Mensch, the funding is necessary to scale much-needed infrastructure, a prerequisite for AI-powered data centers.

“Scaling our infrastructure in Europe is critical to empower our customers and to ensure AI innovation and autonomy remain at the heart of Europe,” said Arthur Mensch.

Earlier in February, the French company also announced a 1.2 billion euro plan to establish data centers and compute capacity in Sweden to materialize its vision of sovereignty. The facility will deliver 23MW of computing power, which will come online by 2027.

“We will continue to invest in this area, given the surging and sustained demand from governments, enterprises and research institutions seeking to build their own customised AI environment, rather than depend on third-party cloud providers,” Mensch added.

The recent debt financing secured by Mistral was funded by a consortium of seven global banks, including BNP Paribas, Bpifrance, Credit Agricole CIB, HSBC, La Banque Postale, Natixis CIB, and MUFG.

AI data centers in Europe

According to Mistral, the funding will be used to build its first facility in Bruyères-le-Châtel, near Paris. The facility, which will house 13,800 of Nvidia’s top-end GB300 AI chips, is expected to start operations before the end of June.

The AI startup is also planning to establish a total of 200MW of AI computing capacity across Europe by the end of 2027.

Tech decoupling

In recent months, the demand for sovereign AI has grown in Europe since US President Donald took office. Moreover, the US and EU reactions have been on a downward trajectory since the conflict over Greenland.

Therefore, the European allies have been calling for so-called “tech decoupling” in the wake of US coercive foreign policy and Trump’s imposed tariffs. The EU bloc is pushing for AI sovereignty by expanding their partnerships in the tech sector.