Mistral, Microsoft Sign Multibillion-Dollar Azure Europe Deal

French AI startup Mistral AI has signed a multibillion-dollar deal with Microsoft to expand computing infrastructure in Europe and boost availability of its large language models in the U.S. Azure customers will access Mistral's French data centers, while two Mistral models, Medium 3.5 and OCR 4, join Azure Foundry's catalog. The deal reflects Europe's push for AI sovereignty, accelerated after the U.S. blocked European access to Anthropic and OpenAI models over security concerns. Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch said the agreement advances efforts to close Europe's infrastructure gap, with the company targeting 1 gigawatt of compute capacity by 2030. Microsoft will not increase its existing stake in Mistral through the deal.