Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

798 points by TechTechTech 4 days ago

ASML Announcement: https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2025/asml-mistra...

ASML gross revenue was 28B€ in 2024, and their net income was 7.5B€. While 1.3B€ (the amount ASML invested in this 1.7B€ fund raise) is not pocket change, it is also an amount that ASML can not afford to lose.

While they might have seen some synergy with Mistral, it might also be a complete strategic and/or political investment. Mistral is the only serious "AI" company in the EU right now (if you exclude company working on the hardware side). It will very likely get a lot of support from the EU to be able to stay in the race with the U.S and China, and in a case of a IA market crash, the EU would also probably like for Mistral to have enough finance to be able to be one of the company that will survive.

By funding Mistral, ASML might be able to buy a lot of political favor, while having stakes in a company that is unlikely to completely fail in the near future due to the EU administration support.

mlinsey - 4 days ago

I dunno if ASML is lacking any political favor that Mistral can give them, they are already one of the most critical companies for Europe and the entire western supply chain.
There is a possibility this is a step towards building a full-stack all-EU AI - if AI delivers on the hype, the EU will certainly want to have one they fully control without dependency on either the US or China. But this would mean having an EU-based alternative to both TSMC and NVIDIA as well, and it's hard to see how that happens. It probably looks something like the EU passing its own CHIPS act to open TSMC-run fabs on EU soil, making Nvidia chips that are then allocated to Mistral; there is non-EU IP there but the whole operation can at least take place on EU soil.
- jules - 4 days ago
  
  What they are buying is support of the French.
  - ph4evers - 4 days ago
    
    With a new French CEO, such a coincidence
- dmix - 4 days ago
  
  Businesses are always looking ahead long term. All technical advantages fade over time.
  - sverhagen - 4 days ago
    
    Some business are looking ahead long term. Others aren't. It wouldn't be novel for a company like ASML to just stay focused no the goose with the golden egg, look at Intel (Pentium etc.) And then there's business that have some sort of long-term strategy, but just won't go all in, and end up with subpar acquisitions; I worked for Verizon: BlueJeans anyone? Or AOL? And those were just part of a pattern.
jacekm - 4 days ago

I just want to remind our overseas friends that the EU is not a country and Mistral is French company. The EU rarely bets on a single firm in a single country, there are always 26 unhappy countries when something like that is about to happen ;)
I am European and I do agree that we should support the European companies but such decision are always results of lengthy deliberations.
Does anyone know if there is any company that is proactively supported by the EU?
- maeln - 3 days ago
  
  I am from the E.U :) . I also work for public administrations and have close relative working for E.U administrations, so I do have some knowledge about how the beast operate.
  > The EU rarely bets on a single firm in a single country
  Indeed, except when they do. While the various E.U administrations like to usually create funds that are distributed with grants (which are rarely evenly distributed evenly amongst the member mind you), there is sometime where they do invest in one horse. This is usually in high-tech, high-capital sector tho', like Airbus, Arianespace, where there is only a very few competitor, and the chance of having new one is very low has the investment in time and money to get a business up and running would be basically only feasible by a state.
  So I don't think Mistral is that (yet at least). But it is still the only company operating at this level in the E.U (for now), making it a decent bet for ASML. Plus, as many pointed out, there is also the French connection :D
  - m4rtink - 3 days ago
    
    Both Airbus and Arianespace are quite distributed across the EU. While this seems to have worked fine for Airbus, it does not seem to work that well for space launchers under the Ariannespace umbrella - though some bits of the Ariane 6 & Vega C are built here in the Czech republic for example. So you can see some new programs that support small orbital launcher companies regardless of geographic distribution, just based on results.
- Jackpillar - 4 days ago
  
  Pointlessly pedantic. Everyone knows EU is not a country. Also, ASML and Mistral are from two different countries.
  That aside, since the Draghi report last year (which was primarily about the innovation gap between the EU/US specifically in tech) and the overall lackluster economic projections, EU officials have been very vocal about losing out to the US (and this time China) in yet another race in a fledgling innovation.
  There is without a doubt some level of influence & assurances from the EU behind this deal.
  - tedggh - 4 days ago
    
    The EU has a very long history of killing entrepreneurship. It is not a coincidence the largest and more innovative companies in the planet are not from Europe despite having both the financial and human resources. This is very unlikely to change now, particularly in a domain so sensitive to data privacy like AI for which the EU parliament is very quick and efficient in launching new and more restrictive regulations. Thinking they are going to have a change of heart now is pretty naive. What ASML is doing is buying a seat in the AI train. They can now flex they are an AI company, and some investors love that. That’s all this is, forget about Mistral being critical to ASML R&D, it is not. Siemens would have been a much better fit for Mistral and vice versa, but that ship already sailed as Siemens is heavily integrated with OpenAI and Azure in the digital factory space.
  - littlestymaar - 4 days ago
    
    > Pointlessly pedantic. Everyone knows EU is not a country
    Very few people in Europe understands how the EU works (do you?), I don't think it's reasonable to expect people from outside to understand it.
    
    vanjoe - 4 days ago
    
    What would have to change for you to consider it a country? It has a government, there has been talk of a European Army. It has a sovereign currency. If it is the squabbling between constituent states: hello from Canada! Check out our politics.
    
    FirmwareBurner - 4 days ago
    
    >What would have to change for you to consider it a country?
    For one, having the leader be actually elected by the people and not second hand appointed by corruptible politicians.
    And that would never work because then voters would just choose a candidate on the criteria of being of the same nationality as them, rather than on policies, which highlights the EU's biggest fault: the massive cultural divide, and people don't like being ruled by someone who isn't of their own culture because then they can't empathize with them, which is 100% valid point, as what would a German royal like Ursula who grew up in UK boarding schools with private security, understand about the life that someone in Greece, Romania or Bulgaria have when she makes deals and policies that negativity affect the least fortunate, like on energy?
    And for two, a mandatory common language. Because over 70% of Airbus Jobs at Toulouse HQ are in French. Same for other companies and countries. So in theory you have job mobility, but in practice it's highly limited if you don't speak the local language.
    >there has been talk of a European Army.
    Since when do talks equal anything in reality? What can I do with talks? Can I spend them? If politicians' talks were cookies I'd have died of diabetes 500x by now.
    There will be no EU army since, just like my previous point, not only do citizens of France won't want to be controlled by a German general, and vice versa, but also all EU countries have their own different geopolitical interests, often in conflict with other members.
    So we'll just have mutual defense agreements whose practical enforcement will always be questionable when shit actually hits the fan, because it's easy for politicians to write mutual defense cheques, but when they have to ask their citizens to go die in another country especially a country they don't have cultural ties or fondness towards, those cheques become very hard to cash.
    
    qnpnp - 3 days ago
    
    > For one, having the leader be actually elected by the people and not second hand appointed by corruptible politicians.
    That's a strange requirement considering the executive of most EU states is not directly elected by people either. Do you not consider Germany or Italy to be countries?
    
    littlestymaar - 3 days ago
    
    > That's a strange requirement considering the executive of most EU states is not directly elected by people either
    At least, it's usually the leader of the party the people voted for in the legislative elections.
    In the EU there was this Spitzenkandidat idea floating around ten years ago, but it was never enacted in texts and died at the first opportunity (naming Von der Leyen back in 2019 when she wasn't the leader of the PPE), because the heads of members states (particularly the French) weren't willing to give up their designation power.
    In practice there isn't even European political parties, the European elections are just national elections represented by national parties and most citizens don't even know the names of the European coalition of parties (PSOE, PPE, Renew, etc…).
    
    FirmwareBurner - 3 days ago
    
    Depends. What is a country? The land borders? The people? The government? The leader? If you take out all the Germans out of Germany and replace them with other people is it still Germany?
    My point was that accountable democracy requires direct vote from the people and not via second hand, not that Germany or Italy aren't countries. And if EU wishes to be a country it needs that level of direct accountability which is impossible.
    Otherwise if you force it it's gonna be another Yugoslavia or USSR where most people are pissed because they're not being ruled by someone of their own culture that they can directly vote for.
    These forced multi-culti nation states under one roof abominations don't work. It's been known since the Tower of Babel yet the elite ruling class think this time it will be different because it worked in the US, a country younger than most universities in Europe.
    
    Propelloni - 3 days ago
    
    > Depends. What is a country? The land borders? The people? The government? The leader? If you take out all the Germans out of Germany and replace them with other people is it still Germany?
    Theseus' ship? Isn't that "Umvolkung" nonsense again? Philosophy, political sciences, and law have have rummaged about these questions for the last few centuries and have developed some pretty good answers. Of course, they are mostly not simple and all too long and intricate for this forum, but I guess you can pick up any modern book on theory of the state to get your answers.
    But I get the distinct notion that you have a certain idea what a country, state, or nation is, considering the conflation with culture, and it is not very embracing of pluralism. I'd wager you'd like Schmidt, maybe Zippelius, but not Böckenförde.