Overview
- Microsoft and Mistral announced a multibillion-dollar partnership on Tuesday that will see Microsoft pay to use Mistral’s expanding GPU data‑center capacity in Europe and distribute Mistral models through its platforms.
- Mistral’s Medium 3.5 and OCR 4 have been added to Microsoft Foundry and Medium 3.5 is available in Microsoft Copilot Studio, allowing developers to build on those models inside Microsoft’s tooling.
- Customers will be able to run Mistral models either on Mistral’s European infrastructure or on Azure Local in their own data centers, including fully disconnected air-gapped setups to meet strict data‑control needs.
- Microsoft said the deal does not include new equity in Mistral and the companies did not disclose exact dollar figures or precise compute allocations, while separate reports say Samsung may be in talks to invest about €1 billion in Mistral at an unconfirmed €20 billion valuation.
- The pact advances Europe’s sovereign‑AI push but depends on U.S.-designed Nvidia GPUs and large power supplies, so chip availability and energy needs could limit how fast Mistral can scale capacity to its 2027 and 2030 targets.