HN Reader

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.

LLM companies are Nvidia wrappers, who is a TSMC wrapper, who is an ASML wrapper. So Mistral is just an ASML wrapper.

I truly do not see the USP for Mistral other than being based in EU. It's former USP of setting up their models on-premises for clients is now moot with the proliferation of open frontier models. I'd love to be proven wrong but I don't see a path forward for Mistral at this point, given how far they're behind and their overall lack of competitive advantages for an AI Lab like access to hardware, cheap energy or a mass of AI talent.

Happy about Mistral. May they grow and compete with the American & Chinese giants.

This is Europe’s go-fund-me page for AI. Unfortunately it’s little league baseball compared to US funding. I think this would rank them pretty low in the list of model provider funding still. (Behind OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Meta, SSI at least)

I saw someone joke that "once Mistral gets back from their European summer, they'll really be in it", and damn, it does feel like that happened.

I don’t really get why ASML is putting money into Mistral AI. ASML is specialized in lithography machines. Mistral, on the other hand, is yet another LLM startup.

What’s the actual synergy here? The closest angle I can imagine is that AI workloads drive demand for more chips, but I believe ASML is already selling everything it can make.

I don't get it. "The collaboration between Mistral AI and ASML aims to generate clear benefits for ASML customers through innovative products and solutions enabled by AI, and will offer potential for joint research to address future opportunities" - so the idea is that ASML customers can somehow make use of Mistral AI?

EU is waking up late but ready to be raising the baseline apparently.

Maybe the best tech news of the year IMHO.

Bad investment IMHO. Mistral was started by people who cheated on benchmarks with their Llama 1. It showed as they had the head start but fell far behind Gemini, DeepSeek and Qwen teams.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. ASML is a highly strategically important company which results in secrecy, and a highly scrutinized and strictly controlled freedom to operate. They basically can't take a toilet break without clearing it with their NATO overlords first.

Mistral is about the only credible EU contender in the LLM space, and has been not just vocal but also in its actions very much in favor of transparancy and openness.

Interesting how these two cultures will collide.

Everyone is so negative here but we have reached the limit of AI scaling with conventional methods. Who knows Mistral might find the next big breakthrough like DeepSeek did. We should be optimistic.

Out of nowhere this sounds like some fantasy company board game move. Like "OpenAI buys Ford to jump in to the autonomous driving game" lol

There's something very interesting about being able to serve strong LLMs at much higher token speeds.

Mistral previously partnered with Cerebras on Le Chat: https://www.cerebras.ai/blog/mistral-le-chat

I'm quite surprised that neither OpenAI nor Anthropic appear to have done a similar deal. Their inference is slow in comparison - like 5.10x slower than what Cerebras can achieve.

Google have their own TPUs which seem to be giving them a performance edge. Google AI mode is lightning fast in comparison to GPT-5 Thinking search for result equality that looks to be in the same ballpark.

... that said, on reading the linked press release there's actually no mention of model performance at all:

> a long-term collaboration agreement to explore the use of AI models across ASML’s product portfolio as well as research, development and operations, to benefit ASML customers with faster time to market and higher performance holistic lithography systems.

I hope they also get to use the new JUPITER supercomputer in Germany which was built, among other things, to strengthen the AI aspirations and self-sufficiency of Europe.

This doesn't make sense to me - I mean it'd OK for Mistral to make AI chips - but ASML doesn't do that, they make photolitography equipment.

With investments of these huge amounts (similar to Anthropic's recent investment), do they actually get a full 1.7B€ deposited into their bank account? Or does it work in some other way?

Hey HN, I am wondering, is Mistral well placed since France has so much cheap electricity from all its nuclear ? Or is my logic not good and it'd be better to be in Germany and buy electricity with negative prices during a Dunkelflaute ?

> The collaboration between Mistral AI and ASML aims to generate clear benefits for ASML customers through innovative products and solutions enabled by AI

I don’t know much about lithography which is why I ask - what is an AI supposed to do in a lithography machine? Does anyone know?

Money transfer

I don't see any way, shape or form in which ASML needs Mistral. If they are interested in AI-based chip design, they should either partner with a leading provider or keep their cards open for buying a startup that focuses on that specifically. Mistral is not even a leader on the segment they specialize in (open-source LLMs).

Market is super frothy and we’ve reached a plateau of what this tech can do right now. Unless someone comes forth with a true step change enhancement things gonna get messy soon.

The current pace of meh models releases and everyone converging on the same quality of tech can’t sustain the number of players and valuations out there. Not even close. Even the AI grifters on LinkedIn are running out of grifting steam.

Cool to see Europe backing a local player. Even if Mistral isn’t leading yet, the competition helps diversify approaches and keeps the ecosystem healthier.

Someone at ASML didn't take their dried frog pills as scheduled...

Is there a cli like gemini-cli but for mistral ... yes i know aider

I guess ASML chips are selling as well as they hoped, need a bigger customer.

So whatever happened to h ai?

Sorry to be that guy, but think there's a decent chance that the people who make possibly the most complicated technology in human history save for the LHC or LIGO _might_ have done some thinking we can't wrap our heads around.

Used to work here for a few years.

Funny how they are investing in AI, yet the actual use of AI is lagging VERRRRYYY much behind other tech companies. Probably 2+ years behind in adoption of AI tooling.

So they have their work cut out for them when it comes to figuring out how to get their paranoid security team to enable teams to use the tools they just invested 1.7b in.

Good news! ASML has a very strategic position. We are essentially all downstream of this one company.

Personally I see this investment as much more political than technical. ASML wants to be a real 'European' champion; not just Dutch. The Dutch and German government are on board; now the French are too.

See also: new CEO is French.

I wonder what process in ASML is such that Mistral group would bring something new there...

Mistral teased Mistral Large 3 within weeks back in May but it never materialized.

If this doesn’t do it, I don’t know what…

I’m eager to see this one because Mistral models actually perform pretty well against top tiers in their class. It’s just that since 2025 they’ve been kinda small. Like, Mistral Medium 3.1 is probably a decent competitor to Google Gemini 2.0 or 2.5 Flash, but they have nothing against Pro.

If they release a large model later this year, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’ll be quite competitive for EU users. They’re pretty close to that threshold now that other large models are plateauing! It’s kinda tantalizing how close!

Mistral cannot be “the EU AI company” if they don’t change their remote work policy. A truly “EU AI company” would benefit from the talent pool of all EU, not just from a couple of cities where they happen to have offices.

ASML CEO: Mistral investment not aimed at strategic autonomy for Europe

"In the long run, all AI models will be similar. It's about how you use the models in a well-protected environment. We will never allow our data and that of our customers to leave ASML. So a partner must be willing to work with us and adapt its model to our needs. Not only did Mistral want to do that, it is also their business model."

https://fd.nl/bedrijfsleven/1569378/asml-ceo-strategische-au...

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Full article translated:

“A good reason to collaborate.” That's how ASML's CEO described his company's remarkable €1.3 billion investment in French AI company Mistral on Wednesday. Since the investment was leaked by Reuters on Sunday, there has been much speculation about ASML's reasons for investing in the European challenger to giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Analysts and commentators pointed to the geopolitical implications or the strong French link between the companies. But according to ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet, the reason was purely business. “Sovereignty has never been the goal.”

Mistral AI is a start-up founded in 2023 that specializes in building large language models. The French CEO of ASML and Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch met at an AI summit in Paris earlier this year and decided to work together to use Mistral's models to further improve ASML's chip machines.

Surprising investment

Each ASML machine generates approximately 1 terabyte of data per day. “Our machines are very complex,” Fouquet explains in an interview with the FD. "We have highly advanced control systems on our machines to enable them to operate very quickly and with great accuracy. The amount of data our machines generate gives us the opportunity to use AI. With the current software and machine learning models, we are limited in what we can do with the data and how quickly we can adjust the machine,“ says the CEO. ”AI is the next step in making better use of all that data."

ASML has invested in other companies in the past, such as German lens manufacturer Zeiss and Eindhoven-based photonics company Smart Photonics, but those were either suppliers or potential customers. Mistral is neither.

Running AI models in-house

According to the ASML CEO, the Dutch company's investment in Mistral stems from the conviction that both companies can create value together. If Mistral becomes more valuable as a result of the collaboration, ASML can benefit from that.

ASML is the main investor in a new €1.7 billion financing round for Mistral. This makes Mistral an important AI player in Europe, but small compared to its American rivals. OpenAI raised $40 billion in its latest round alone. Anthropic, the company behind the Claude program, which is popular among programmers, just closed a $13 billion round.

“European sovereignty was not the goal”

According to Fouquet, the reason for the collaboration lies primarily in the way Mistral develops its AI models. “In the long run, all AI models will be similar. It's about how you use the models in a well-protected environment,” says Fouquet. “We will never allow our data and that of our customers to leave ASML. So a partner must be willing to work with us and adapt its model to our needs. Not only did Mistral want to do that, it is also their business model.”

According to Fouquet, the collaboration is not motivated by a desire for greater European sovereignty. “That was not the goal. But if it contributes to that, we are happy,” says Fouquet.

ASML supports EU initiatives to strengthen the chip sector in Europe, but always maintains a politically neutral stance in the geopolitical struggle between the United States, China, and the European Union. This is understandable, as the company has major customers in all regions, such as TSMC in Taiwan, SK Hynix in South Korea, SMIC in China, and Intel in the US.

“Two birds with one stone”

Although ASML itself does not play the European card, some analysts and politicians do see such a motive for the collaboration with Mistral. “Thousands of large companies worldwide make extensive use of AI in their product development by using the services of OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Mistral, without investing in these companies,” writes investment bank Jefferies in a commentary. “We also do not believe that ASML needed an investment in an AI company to benefit from AI models in its lithography products. In our view, the investment stems primarily from geopolitical motives to support and develop a European AI company and ecosystem,” the bank states.

Wouter Huygen, CEO of AI consultancy Rewire, also sees a clear link to European sovereignty. “ASML is known for taking internal technology development very far. It is therefore quite understandable that ASML is taking this step: access to and influence on the development of a strategic technology. Plus European sovereignty. That's two birds with one stone.”

What does 1.7B euro buy in Europe? I ask sincerely since big players are throwing 10s-100s of billions at strategic problems these days.

is 1.7B€ a new quant type?

It's rather ridiculous to think that the world really wants to stick all its eggs in an American basket. Individual companies will pick whatever works best for them but I think the governments will be delighted to avoid a dependency like that.

ASML wants to get some of that sweet TSMC/nvidia money, and bypass them by using Mistral knowledge in AI... presumably.

[edit: nevermind, I speculated before reading the announcement. Reality is much more boring than that]