In a clear sign of its push beyond language models, a major European AI player is moving deeper into cloud infrastructure and deployment services.
Mistral AI has completed its first acquisition by agreeing to buy Paris-based startup Koyeb. The French AI company, last valued at $13.8 billion and often seen as a European rival to OpenAI, is expanding into AI cloud infrastructure and large-scale deployment.
The acquisition marks a strategic shift for Mistral, which has so far focused mainly on building large language models. In June 2025, the company launched Mistral Compute, an AI cloud infrastructure platform built to support large-scale model deployment. With Koyeb joining the group, Mistral expects this initiative to scale faster.
Founded in 2020 by 3 former employees of Scaleway, Koyeb was created to simplify how developers deploy and manage applications using a serverless approach. As AI workloads became more demanding, this model gained relevance. The startup recently launched Koyeb Sandboxes, isolated environments designed for secure and efficient deployment of AI agents.
Before the acquisition, Koyeb’s platform already allowed customers to deploy models from Mistral and other providers. In a blog post, Koyeb said its platform will continue to operate. Its technology and team will also support Mistral in deploying models on customers’ on-premises hardware, improving GPU use, and scaling AI inference.
As part of the deal, Koyeb’s 13 employees, including co-founders Yann Léger, Edouard Bonlieu, and Bastien Chatelard, will join Mistral’s engineering team. They will work under CTO and co-founder Timothée Lacroix. Koyeb expects its technology to become a “core component” of Mistral Compute in the coming months.
“Koyeb’s product and expertise will accelerate our development on the Compute front, and contribute to building a true Al cloud,” Lacroix said.
Mistral has also stepped up infrastructure spending. It recently announced a $1.4 billion investment in data centers in Sweden. Koyeb had raised $8.6 million before the acquisition, including a $7 million seed round in 2023 led by Serena.
Mistral recently crossed $400 million in annual recurring revenue. Speaking at the Techarena conference, CEO Arthur Mensch said the company is hiring aggressively, positioning itself as “headquartered in Europe, that is doing frontier research in Europe.”
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