French artificial intelligence startup, Mistral AI, is reportedly expected to nearly triple its valuation to $6 billion in six months in a new funding round.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Mistral is expected to raise around $600 million in its new round, which includes its existing investors, General Catalyst and Lightspeed Venture Partners, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
The open source AI startup raised $415 million in its Series A funding round in December, reaching a $2 billion valuation. Mistral was reportedly speaking to investors about raising hundreds of millions of dollars in its next funding round, and was seeking a $5 billion valuation earlier this year.
In February, Mistral and Microsoft announced a multi-year, $16.3 million partnership focused on commercializing the startup’s flagship models and scaling up its AI development and deployment. Mistral’s large language models (LLMs) are available on Microsoft’s Azure AI platform, giving the startup more opportunity to promote, sell, and distribute its models to customers around the world.
The startup, which was founded a year ago by former DeepMind and Meta AI researchers, has recently started generating revenue, The Information reported in April. Mistral did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The billions of dollars being invested in AI startups, which in turn is leading to multi-billion dollar valuations, has created skeptics warning of a tech stock bubble reminiscent of the dot-com bubble which burst in 2000. However, experts told Quartz the two bubbles are different, and fears of a bubble burst are short-sighted.
Arthur Mensch, Mistral’s chief executive, has said the startup wants to take on the tech titans of Silicon Valley.
“We want to be the most capital-efficient company in the world of AI,” Mensch told the Wall Street Journal. “That’s the reason we exist.”