French AI startup, Mistral AI, raises $113M in seed funding at a $260M valuation to challenge OpenAI.

Paris-based startup Mistral AI has secured $113m in seed funding just four weeks after launching, valuing it at $260m. The funding will be used to establish a world-class team focused on building and training large language models and generative AI for enterprise customers. Mistral AI intends to utilise open source solutions and publicly available data when creating products, the first of which will be for text-based generative AI in 2024. CEO Arthur Mensch, along with co-founders Timothée Lacroix and Guillaume Lample, all previously worked in artificial intelligence, respectively at Google’s DeepMind and Meta. Mistral AI’s focus is on providing easy-to-use tools that can help workers in diverse fields get creative with AI. The funding was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, and also includes investment from Bpifrance and Eric Schmidt.