{"text":[[{"start":10.397,"text":"French AI start-up Mistral has raised $830mn in its debut debt financing to support the construction of Nvidia-powered data centres across Europe."}],[{"start":20.844,"text":"The investment comes as the company undergoes rapid growth from companies and governments seeking “sovereign” European alternatives to US groups such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google."}],[{"start":33.355,"text":"Mistral has previously unveiled plans to spend €4bn on building AI infrastructure, including facilities in France and Sweden."}],[{"start":44.96,"text":"“Scaling our infrastructure in Europe is critical to empower our customers and to ensure AI innovation and autonomy remain at the heart of Europe,” said chief executive Arthur Mensch."}],[{"start":56.329,"text":"“We will continue to invest in this area, given the surging and sustained demand from governments, enterprises and research institutions seeking to build their own customised AI environment, rather than depend on third-party cloud providers.”"}],[{"start":71.315,"text":"Tech companies are turning to debt to fund the construction of AI data centres at an unprecedented rate."}],[{"start":76.72,"text":"Amazon, Google and Meta have each raised tens of billions of dollars from the bond markets during the past few months, as even the Big Tech giants’ huge cash flows prove insufficient to fund massive infrastructure projects needed to meet rocketing AI demand."}],[{"start":94.96,"text":"However, some analysts have warned that the investment carries high risk given the uncertain returns from the facilities and potential for oversupply of AI capacity because of the frantic pace of construction."}],[{"start":108.24,"text":"Mistral was valued at nearly €12bn last year in a €1.7bn equity financing led by chip equipment maker ASML. It was on track to surpass $1bn in annual recurring revenue by the end of this year, Mensch told the FT last month."}],[{"start":126,"text":"Part of the Paris-based company’s pitch to business customers is that it can offer a simplified “full stack” package of products, from custom AI software to the cloud computing infrastructure needed to run it."}],[{"start":137.44,"text":"Just over half of Mistral’s revenues come from Europe, where demand for sovereign AI has grown since US President Donald Trump returned to office last year."}],[{"start":148,"text":"Concern about US foreign policy and the Trump administration’s threats to reduce support for European allies have brought new urgency to calls for a so-called tech decoupling, boosting local providers of alternatives to Silicon Valley-based services."}],[{"start":164.83,"text":"Mistral’s debt funding, announced on Monday, will be used for its first facility in Bruyères-le-Châtel, near Paris, which is expected to start operations before the end of June. It will house 13,800 of Nvidia’s top-end GB300 AI chips."}],[{"start":181.834,"text":"The financing was supported by a group of mainly French banks, including Bpifrance, BNP Paribas, HSBC and MUFG. It plans to build secure a total of 200MW of AI computing capacity across Europe by the end of 2027."}],[{"start":200.977,"text":"Last month, Mistral announced a €1.2bn facility in Sweden to provide 23MW of computing power, which will come online next year."}],[{"start":211.36,"text":"That data centre would generate more than €2bn in revenue over the next five years, Mensch said, creating a “strong appetite for underwriting the infrastructure investment”."}],[{"start":222.4,"text":"While the scale of its financing and infrastructure build-out lags far behind Silicon Valley rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic, Mistral is one of the few European companies developing frontier AI models."}],[{"start":236.08,"text":"This month, Meta’s former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun raised more than $1bn for his new start-up, Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs, which is also based in Paris."}],[{"start":null,"text":"