Mistral invests in Swedish infrastructure as annual revenues top $400m

(Sharecast News) - Mistral, the French AI startup widely seen as Europe's main competitor to ChatGPT maker OpenAI, revealed on Wednesday that its revenues have rocketed 20-fold over the past year.

The company, which was founded in 2023 but already backed by the likes of Nvidia, Microsoft and ASML, said in an interview with the Financial Times that its annualised run rate - an indicator of future revenue generation based on its performance over a shorter time frame - now stands at "north of $400m".

That's according to co-founder and chief executive Arthur Mensch, and compares with just $20m a year ago.

The revelation came as Mistral unveiled a €1.2bn investment in AI data centres and advanced compute capacity in Sweden.

"This investment is a concrete step toward building independent capabilities in Europe, dedicated to AI," Mensch said in a statement.

The facilities, expected to open in 2027 to support Mistral's next-gen AI models, will be built and operated by Sweden's EcoDataCenter.