France's AI company Mistral buys cloud service startup Koyeb

PARIS, Feb 17 (Reuters) - French artificial intelligence company Mistral AI said on Tuesday it had agreed to buy cloud computing service startup Koyeb based near Paris for an undisclosed amount.

"With this first acquisition, Mistral AI takes a significant step forward in its mission to build a full-stack AI champion and advance cutting-edge AI infrastructure," Mistral said in a statement.

Koyeb, which is registered in Paris commune Boulogne-Billancourt, provides cloud services without servers. Its 13 employees and three co-founders will join Mistral's team.

Mistral, which was valued at $11.7 billion in September after chipmaking equipment supplier ASML ASML.AS became a shareholder, is considered Europe's largest AI company.

Last week, the company announced a 1.2 billion euro ($1.42 billion) investment in new data centres in Sweden as part of an effort to keep its technology and cloud servers in Europe, unlike its main competitors such as U.S.-based Open AI.

($1 = 0.8455 euros)