Microsoft and Mistral strike multi-billion-dollar deal to build AI infrastructure across Europe

Microsoft and Mistral have expanded their strategic partnership with a multi-billion-dollar deal to build AI infrastructure across Europe, adding thousands of Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs. Mistral's Medium 3.5 and OCR 4 models are now available in Microsoft Foundry, and Medium 3.5 is also available in Copilot Studio. Microsoft President Brad Smith said Europe should be able to use powerful AI without giving up control over its data.

Microsoft and Mistral strike multi-billion-dollar deal to build AI infrastructure across Europe Microsoft and Mistral are expanding their strategic partnership with a multi-billion-dollar deal to build out AI infrastructure in Europe. Mistral is adding thousands of Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs https://the-decoder.com/ces-2026-nvidia-promises-five-times-the-ai-performance-and-ten-times-cheaper-inference-with-vera-rubin/ , and Microsoft will tap that capacity for its cloud and AI services. Mistral's Medium 3.5 https://the-decoder.com/mistrals-new-flagship-medium-3-5-folds-chat-reasoning-and-code-into-one-model/ and OCR 4 https://the-decoder.com/mistrals-new-ocr-model-beats-competitors-in-72-percent-of-blind-test-cases-company-says/ models are now available in Microsoft Foundry. Medium 3.5 is also available in Copilot Studio. Companies can run Mistral models through Azure Local in the cloud, in their own environments, or completely offline. The offering targets regulated industries like finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. Microsoft President Brad Smith said Europe should be able to use powerful AI without giving up control over its data. Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch sees the partnership as a way to reach companies and public institutions worldwide. Mensch also recently warned that companies risk exposing trade secrets https://the-decoder.com/mistral-ceo-mensch-says-proprietary-ai-models-give-labs-a-front-row-seat-to-your-business-processes/ when they use closed AI models. The company, founded in 2023, recently grew its revenue twentyfold https://the-decoder.com/mistrals-revenue-grows-20x-in-one-year-as-europe-pushes-for-ai-independence/ to a run rate above $400 million. It invested 1.2 billion euros in data centers in Sweden and, according to Bloomberg https://the-decoder.com/mistral-ai-seeks-3-billion-euros-to-fund-its-european-ai-push/ , is negotiating a new funding round of about 3 billion euros at a valuation of roughly 20 billion euros. Mistral recently renamed its chatbot Le Chat to Vibe https://the-decoder.com/mistral-rebrands-lechat-as-vibe-betting-its-chatbots-future-is-as-a-full-blown-work-agent/ and repositioned it as an AI productivity tool with Work Mode and Code Mode. AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section. Subscribe now Microsoft https://news.microsoft.com/source/2026/07/21/microsoft-and-mistral-expand-strategic-partnership-to-give-enterprises-and-regulated-industries-frontier-ai-they-can-control/