French AI vendor Mistral is set to spend $1.43 billion to develop digital infrastructure for AI in Sweden.
The 2023 startup’s first major investment will be to build an AI data center at local company EcoDataCenter’s site in Borlänge, central Sweden.
A statement posted on EcoDataCenter’s website confirmed Mistral will deploy large-scale compute at the Borlänge facility, enabling operation of its foundation models at scale. The data center, located around 130 miles northwest of the capital, Stockholm, is scheduled to open next year.
While an important development for Sweden, it’s arguably an even more significant one for Mistral and Europe’s AI rollout as a whole.
The Paris-based company has established itself as Europe’s leading AI vendor on the back of heavy funding, with the Netherlands’ ASML Holding NV leading a $2 billion Series C round last September that valued Mistral at $6B. However, the Borlänge project is the vendor’s first major AI infrastructure investment outside of France.
Mistral sees the collaboration as a key moment in the effort to deliver a fully European AI stack — a scenario many on the continent think is desirable, rather than relying on American and Chinese tech, amid an uncertain geopolitical landscape.
“This investment is a concrete step toward building independent capabilities in Europe, dedicated to AI,” Arthur Mensch, CEO and co-founder of Mistral AI, said in a release. “By delivering a fully vertical offer with locally processed and stored data, we are reinforcing Europe’s strategic autonomy and competitiveness.”
He added: “This lays the foundation for a European AI cloud that can serve industries, public institutions, and researchers at scale.”
EcoDataCenter’s role will be to build and operate the infrastructure required for AI facilities in Sweden, and as the company name suggests, there will be a focus on sustainability using renewable energy and advanced cooling techniques. The Borlänge center will use Nvidia’s Vera Rubin GPUs and is said to offer significant scalability potential.
Mistral’s desire to bolster Europe’s AI autonomy follows several moves by the U.S.-based major AI players on the continent.
In July 2025, OpenAI revealed plans for a huge data center in Narvik, Norway, as part of the Stargate initiative, the $500 billion AI infrastructure project launched in January 2025 by President Donald Trump with Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Microsoft has pledged $30 billion to develop the U.K.’s AI infrastructure — including building the country’s largest supercomputer at a site in Essex — and another $10 billion to build a data center in Portugal.
Google, meanwhile, has committed to invest about $6.4 billion to boost Germany’s AI infrastructure, including the construction of a new data center near Frankfurt.
