France-based AI startup Mistral AI has made its first acquisition, quietly signaling a broader shift in its ambitions. The company, recently valued at $13.8 billion, is acquiring Paris-based cloud platform Koyeb, which focuses on simplifying how developers deploy and scale AI applications.
Until now, Mistral has largely been recognized for building large language models and positioning itself as a European alternative to OpenAI. But this move shows it wants to do more than just develop models. It is steadily building the infrastructure layer needed to run them efficiently at scale.
Expanding Beyond Models Into AI Infrastructure
Koyeb, founded in 2020 by former Scaleway employees, built its reputation around a serverless platform that removes the burden of managing servers. As AI systems grew heavier and more complex, tools that could handle deployment and scaling automatically became increasingly important. More recently, Koyeb introduced isolated “Sandboxes” designed specifically for deploying AI agents.
Following the acquisition, Koyeb’s platform will continue operating. At the same time, its team and technology will help Mistral strengthen its AI cloud offering, Mistral Compute, which was introduced earlier this year. The focus will be on improving GPU usage, supporting on-premises deployments for clients, and scaling inference workloads more smoothly.
All 13 Koyeb employees, including its three co-founders, are expected to join Mistral’s engineering team under CTO Timothée Lacroix. Over the coming months, Koyeb’s technology is set to become a core component of Mistral’s compute infrastructure.
The deal also comes amid a wider push in Europe to build more independent AI infrastructure. Just days ago, Mistral announced a $1.4 billion investment in Swedish data centers, highlighting rising demand for alternatives to U.S.-based cloud providers.
Koyeb had raised $8.6 million before the acquisition, and its investors see the combination as a step toward strengthening Europe’s AI backbone. Mistral, for its part, recently crossed $400 million in annual recurring revenue, driven largely by enterprise customers. Going forward, Koyeb will concentrate more on enterprise clients, and new users will no longer be able to sign up for its entry-level Starter tier.
Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. However, CEO Arthur Mensch has made it clear in recent public appearances that Mistral is hiring aggressively in infrastructure and research roles. The message is straightforward: the company wants to build advanced AI systems — and the cloud foundation beneath them — from Europe, for Europe and beyond.
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