Mistral CEO Says the Company Wants an IPO
Mistral is among a clutch of privately held AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic that have seen valuations soar.

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He wasn’t wearing a lizard-embossed jacket or making any grand pronouncements about the state of artificial general intelligence, but the CEO of Paris-based AI startup Mistral is making it clear he intends to run with the big boys. Though not too big, mind you.
Speaking at Davos on Tuesday, Arthur Mensch said the company is not looking to be bought and that “the plan” is for the firm to, at some point, go public. Mistral is among a clutch of privately held AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic that have seen valuations soar as bigger tech giants have thrown their weight (and funding) behind them.
Public-Facing AI
There are plenty of AI-heavy public stocks on the market at the moment, perhaps the most notable being Nvidia. However, Nvidia is in the enviable position of providing all the hardware that AI-hungry companies need, and other big AI players like Microsoft and Alphabet are behemoths with multiple revenue streams.
For startups like Mistral, AI software is the only product on offer. Like OpenAI, Mistral has backing from Microsoft, and Anthropic has amassed $8 billion in funding from Amazon plus $3 billion from Google, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. In comparison to OpenAI and Anthropic, however, Mistral remains something petite:
- Sifted reported in June of last year that Mistral had closed a €468 million ($486 million) equity funding round at a €5.8 billion ($6 billion) valuation. In November of last year, Sifted also reported that Mistral has just over 100 employees, doubling headcount over a six-month period.
- The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Anthropic was raising funds targeting a $60 billion valuation. In October, OpenAI announced it had completed a $6.6 billion fundraise, reaching a valuation of $157 billion.
Punching Above Your Weight: Ordinarily a two-year-old startup that has already hit a $6 billion valuation wouldn’t be able to play the underdog card, but this is the funhouse mirror world of AI company valuations. In this sense, an IPO for Mistral might carry less risk than the mega-valued Anthropic or OpenAI, whose enormous valuations would be exposed to the whims of public investors.