Microsoft & Mistral Announce Multibillion-Dollar AI Infrastructure Partnership in Europe

Microsoft and French AI startup Mistral have expanded their partnership with a multibillion-dollar agreement to increase AI compute capacity in Europe, while making Mistral’s latest models available across Microsoft’s AI platform for enterprise customers, particularly those in regulated industries.

The partnership includes Microsoft’s commitment to use part of Mistral’s Europe-based GPU infrastructure, which will be built using thousands of NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs. Microsoft said the additional capacity will support AI development and help meet growing demand for its cloud and AI services.

The companies are bringing Mistral's Medium 3.5 and OCR 4 models to Microsoft Foundry, while Medium 3.5 is now also available in Microsoft Copilot Studio. Customers will be able to build AI applications using the same models and tools across Azure, Azure Local and fully disconnected environments.

Azure and Azure Local will support three deployment options: cloud-hosted deployments, cloud-connected customer-controlled environments, and fully disconnected deployments for organisations with strict operational or regulatory requirements.

The announcement comes as governments and enterprises in Europe seek greater control over where AI models run and how sensitive data is handled. Microsoft said the partnership extends its sovereign cloud strategy by combining Mistral's models with Azure’s security, compliance and deployment capabilities.

“Europe should have access to the world’s most capable AI without compromising control over their data, operations or digital future,” said Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President at Microsoft. “By bringing Mistral's frontier European models into our sovereign cloud portfolio and enabling them across public cloud, cloud-connected and fully disconnected environments, we are honouring the European Digital Commitments we made and giving customers a trusted foundation for AI they can operate on their own terms.”

Arthur Mensch, Co-founder and CEO of Mistral, said the partnership will help the company reach more enterprise and public-sector customers.

“Our mission has always been to put frontier AI in the hands of every organisation while keeping them in control of their technology,” Mensch said. “With Microsoft as our partner, our models reach enterprises and public institutions at global scale, delivered through a platform trusted for the most demanding, regulated workloads and available everywhere our customers operate.”

Microsoft and Mistral also said they will jointly pursue enterprise customers in Europe and other markets by funding proof-of-concept projects, providing Azure credits and conducting customer workshops to accelerate AI adoption.