French AI company Mistral hits $24 billion valuation in funding round

France’s Mistral has raised €3 billion at a valuation ​of around €21 billion ($24 billion), in what ​the three-year-old AI company said on Tuesday was the biggest equity ​funding round by a privately owned European technology firm.

Mistral said that the round was jointly led by existing investor PSG Equity, along with South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and the EU-backed Scaleup Europe Fund, which both invested ‌in it for ⁠the ⁠first time.

The fundraising makes Mistral Europe’s second-highest-valued private tech group and the fastest-growing company in Europe, its chief financial ​officer Johan Bergqvist told Reuters.