Co-founder and CEO of Mistral AI. Former researcher at Google DeepMind. Built Europe's leading AI lab, reaching a $6B valuation in under two years.
Mensch is Europe's best and possibly only shot at a frontier AI lab. Reaching a $6B valuation in under two years with a hybrid open-weights and commercial strategy was impressive, but Mistral's real test is whether it can stay at the frontier as training costs escalate. The European sovereignty narrative gives him political tailwinds that no American or Chinese competitor enjoys.
I’m proud to announce a strategic partnership with Groupe Caisse des Dépôts and its 19 subsidiaries, which includes access to AI services, expert consulting, and computing power. This demonstrates the power of procurement in driving strategic autonomy as it serves as both a market-shaping tool and a strategic lever. It provides European tech providers with the scale, stability, and credibility needed to compete globally, while ensuring EU institutions benefit from secure, values-aligned, and cutting-edge solutions. Together with Groupe Caisse des Dépôts, we’re proving that Europe can build its own technological future.
What Mistral AI (and many others) will do in the coming months will impact Europe’s prosperity and autonomy for the decades to come. That’s why, together with leading European tech companies (Airbus, ASML, Ericsson, Nokia, SAP, Siemens), we met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. We believe that we can, as Europe keeps losing competitiveness in an uncertain geopolitical scene, change Europe’s innovation path. Europe has the talents, the ecosystems, and the demand needed to build global leaders in the technology stack - from semiconductors to complex AI workflows - and to increase its technological autonomy drastically. To get there, we ask in this op-ed for a new collective approach to unlock innovation, foster growth and unleash investments. This wake-up call aims at ensuring that industry leaders and policymakers consult each other and act as one, now.