France's Mistral raises $830 million in debt for AI data centre build-up

By Supantha Mukherjee and Leo Marchandon

STOCKHOLM, March 30 - Europe's leading AI provider Mistral has raised $830 million in new debt to buy 13,800 Nvidia NVDA.O chips for a major data centre near Paris, the firm told Reuters, as Europe races to scale AI infrastructure to compete with the U.S. and China.

The deal, set to be announced on Monday, marks Mistral's first debt raising and underscores growing investor confidence in European AI firms as they seek to challenge the dominance of U.S. tech giants like Microsoft MSFT.O, Google GOOGL.O and Amazon AMZN.O in cloud computing and AI services.

Mistral's debt raising was financed by a consortium of seven banks, including BNP Paribas BNPP.PA, Crédit Agricole CIB CAGR.PA, HSBC HSBA.L and MUFG 8306.T, it said. The data center in Bruyeres-le-Chatel is expected to become operational in the second quarter of 2026.

Mistral selected the site for its first data center in February 2025. Last month, the company unveiled plans for a second facility in Sweden and said it would seek to secure 200 megawatts of capacity across Europe by the end of 2027.

"Scaling our infrastructure in Europe is critical to empower our customers and to ensure AI innovation and autonomy remain at the heart of Europe," Chief Executive Arthur Mensch said in a statement shared with Reuters.

The Paris-based startup, which provides AI models to the French armed forces, has positioned itself as a European alternative to U.S. AI leaders, offering both models and infrastructure services to governments and enterprises seeking greater technological independence.