French AI startup Mistral AI is reportedly in the early stages of raising approximately €3 billion ($3.5 billion), according to a Bloomberg report on Friday that cited unnamed sources. If completed, this funding round would value the company at around €20 billion (about $23.15 billion)—nearly double the €11.7 billion valuation it achieved during its Series C round last September.

Launched in 2023, Mistral is one of Europe’s premier AI firms, with an initial goal of making "frontier AI in the hands of everyone." The company distinguishes itself from American competitors by adopting a more open approach to AI development. It releases some of its foundational large language models with open weights, enabling anyone to customize them freely. At the same time, Mistral also offers closed models tailored for specific applications, including programming, voice cloning and generation, and optical character recognition.

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As European countries increasingly distance themselves from American technology, Mistral has positioned itself as a more friendly, "sovereign," and homegrown alternative. The company is currently building a data center near Paris and has formed partnerships with the French military, the government of Luxembourg, and several major European corporations.

Despite these efforts, Mistral has raised only about $4 billion to date, according to PitchBook—a fraction of the funds secured by U.S. rivals OpenAI ($186 billion) and Anthropic ($161.25 billion). Those American labs also command significantly higher valuations, reflecting how much further they have pulled ahead in terms of revenue, model adoption, and enterprise demand. Mistral did not immediately respond to a request for comment.