“We should exceed one billion in revenue by the end of the year,” announced Arthur Mensch, CEO and co-founder of Mistral AI, in an interview with Bloomberg on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Last September, the French generative AI rising star reported €300 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).

Its revenue now comes from several sources: licensing its models for enterprise customer use cases, subscriptions to Chat Enterprise—the enterprise version of its conversational assistant Le Chat—and consumer subscriptions to Chat.

Arthur Mensch also confirmed that Mistral is in an external growth “process.” “We are currently looking at a few opportunities,” he said regarding potential acquisitions, adding that Mistral has earmarked one billion euros for capital expenditures (Capex). The executive did not specify which sectors Mistral might target for acquisitions, nor which geographic areas would be involved.

Mistral, Europe’s champion of generative AI

As a reminder, the startup raised €1.7 billion last September with the Dutch technology giant ASML taking a stake.

Valued at €11.7 billion following this round, Mistral positions itself as the European champion of artificial intelligence in the face of American giants, at a time when the issue of Europe’s technological sovereignty has become crucial.

Concerns about the European Union’s digital dependence on the United States are widespread among business leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum, at a moment when strong geopolitical tensions oppose the Old Continent and President Donald Trump over Greenland.

“It is extremely important not to be dependent on a single country or a single company for very critical sectors of our economy or our society,” said Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of digital affairs, on Thursday during a roundtable on European digital sovereignty in Davos.

Also invited to take part in a panel discussion on Europe’s place in the world, Arthur Mensch emphasized that China’s supposed lag behind the United States in AI is a “myth.” He believes that “China is not behind the West. The capabilities of Chinese open-source technologies are probably worrying American CEOs.”