The French artificial intelligence laboratory, Mistral, is pursuing an initial public offering, as co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch communicated during an interview with Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Mistral is described as “not for sale,” with Mensch stating that the organisation intends to establish an office in Singapore to target the Asia-Pacific market while expanding in Europe and the United States. “Of course, an IPO is the plan,” he stated.
Founded in 2023 by Mensch along with former researchers from Google’s DeepMind and Meta, Mistral is often viewed as Europe’s counterpart to American leaders such as OpenAI. The laboratory develops AI models and services that rival those of OpenAI and other competitors, including a platform resembling ChatGPT, named Le Chat.
To date, Mistral has successfully secured approximately $1.14 billion in funding from prominent investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The organisation was reportedly last evaluated at roughly $6 billion.