France-based start-up Mistral AI reportedly secured €600 million from its latest funding round led by tech-focused investment company General Catalyst, with its valuation increasing to almost €6 billion.

Financial Times (FT) reported the latest fundraising was managed by General Catalyst, which has pumped money into companies like Snap and Deliveroo, alongside Mistral’s existing backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Samsung, IBM, Nvidia and Salesforce.

The newspaper’s sources noted investor giant DST Global participated for the first time in the funding round. Microsoft, which has invested $16 million in Mistral AI, did not join the fundraising.

Mistral AI’s fresh capital injection came two weeks after Elon Musk’s AI venture xAI raised $6 billion in funding, in which VC company Andreessen Horowitz also contributed. Mistral AI’s valuation stands at around €5.8 billion, according to FT‘s sources.

Speaking to the outlet, one of Mistral AI’s co-founders Arthur Mensch said the company has “a little more than 1,000” of the high-powered GPUs to train its AI and spent “just a couple of dozen million euros” to develop products that can apparently compete with AI powerhouses including OpenAI, Meta Platforms and Google. Mensch cited a plan to “scale up” commercialisation efforts and purchase more computing power, the latter of which he sees as a way to “break the barriers of AI”.

Mistral AI has 60 staff across France, UK and US. The company keeps its AI software “open source” as to be accessible to everyone.

Recently, the start-up was at the crosshairs of the UK Competition and Markets Authority due to its partnership with Microsoft, a probe which was eventually abandoned by the regulator.