The world’s top lithography equipment maker is entering the AI race.
According to a Reuters exclusive, ASML has invested $1.5 billion to lead Mistral AI’s $2 billion Series C funding round, becoming the French AI startup’s largest shareholder.
With this deal, Mistral AI is now Europe’s most valuable AI company, a move widely seen as a power play for the continent’s tech ambitions.
ASML Eyes AI to Power the Future of Chips
ASML needs little introduction: the Dutch company is the exclusive supplier of EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) lithography machines, each costing around $180 million. These systems are essential for fabricating the world’s most advanced chips at TSMC, Intel, and Samsung.
This time, ASML isn’t just writing a check—it’s also gaining a seat on Mistral AI’s board, signaling a deep strategic partnership. Industry insiders say the move goes beyond financial support: it’s about Europe’s technological sovereignty.
AI is already being used to optimize chip manufacturing. By combining Mistral AI’s models with ASML’s cutting-edge lithography systems, the two companies could significantly boost precision, efficiency, and next-gen semiconductor innovation.
Mistral AI: The “European OpenAI” Rising at Lightning Speed
Founded in May 2023 by Timothée Lacroix and Guillaume Lample (ex-Meta Paris AI Lab) and Arthur Mensch (ex-DeepMind), Mistral AI has rapidly become Europe’s flagship AI startup.
- Current valuation: $14 billion
- Technology: rivaling ChatGPT in performance
- Philosophy: fully committed to open-source AI
Mistral’s founders inherited Meta’s strong open-source culture, where large models like Llama 2 and Code Llama were released to the community.
Their breakthrough came in December 2023, when they released the first open-source MoE (Mixture of Experts) large model (87GB, 8x7B architecture). The torrent-based release went viral, followed within days by a $415M funding round that valued the company at $2B.
With fewer than 30 employees, Mistral set a record for the fastest growth in open-source AI history.
Mission: Put AI in Everyone’s Hands
Mistral’s vision is simple yet ambitious: make frontier AI accessible to everyone.
Its ChatGPT competitor, Le Chat, hit 1M mobile downloads within just two weeks of launch. French President Emmanuel Macron even endorsed it during the Paris AI Action Summit earlier this year.
Since its founding, Mistral has continuously released and open-sourced models, including:
- Mistral Large 2 (flagship large language model)
- Pixtral Large (multimodal family)
- Magistral (first reasoning model)
- Voxtral (first open-source AI audio model)
- Devstral (AI for coding)
- Les Ministraux (lightweight edge-device models)
Beyond models, Mistral launched Mistral Compute, a full-stack AI infrastructure platform offering GPUs, schedulers, APIs, and developer services.
Europe’s Countermove in the AI-Chip Race
ASML’s investment marks more than just a partnership—it represents Europe’s proactive strike in the global tech race.
With American and Chinese AI companies surging ahead, Europe has been seeking its own champion. The combination of Mistral’s powerful AI models and ASML’s unmatched lithography technology could open a new frontier at the intersection of AI and semiconductors.
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