Microsoft has agreed to invest billions into Mistral’s European data centers, with the deal aimed at allowing enterprises in regulated industries to run AI on European infrastructure.
Microsoft’s Vice Chair and President, Brad Smith, said that the agreement adds no new equity stake in Mistral. The investment will focus on spending for AI compute and capacity rather than acquiring additional ownership in Mistral.
Mistral is expanding its European data centers with thousands of NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs. This hardware will support Microsoft’s cloud and AI services.
Two of Mistral’s models, Medium 3.5 and OCR 4, are now available in Microsoft Foundry, enabling customers to run these models either in the cloud or on Azure Local, a Microsoft solution that allows organizations to maintain workloads within their own data centers.
This setup is particularly beneficial for banks, hospitals, and manufacturers, which face strict regulations regarding data storage and processing. Brad Smith and Mistral co-founder Arthur Mensch noted that the deal enhances the control regulated businesses have over their AI infrastructure deployment.
“By putting Mistral’s models on Azure Local and on Mistral’s computational capacity, we can combine American and European technology and do it in a way that provides continuous and assured access,” Smith said.
The deal is expected to strengthen the existing partnership between Microsoft and Mistral. Mensch stated that two-thirds of Mistral’s current customers already work with Microsoft, indicating that this collaboration will help reach more businesses across Europe and beyond.
The companies plan to conduct joint sales efforts targeting financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, and other regulated sectors. Microsoft’s agreement is part of its European Digital Commitments, which aim to expand data center capacity across the EU by 2025. The deal with Mistral reflects Microsoft’s established operational model, which combines its own facilities with leased and partner capacity.
