PARIS—Europe’s most prominent artificial-intelligence developer is tapping the continent’s biggest tech giant for cash to keep up in the global AI race.

Dutch chip-equipment giant ASML is pumping more than $1.5 billion into France’s Mistral AI for an 11% stake, leading a round valuing the Paris-based startup at nearly $14 billion—more than double its valuation last year. The ASML funds come as part of a roughly $2 billion round that Mistral says also includes Yuri Milner’s DST Global and French state-owned investment bank Bpifrance.

The deal gives Mistral, founded in 2023, fresh firepower in its quest to develop cutting-edge AI models and data centers independent from its American competitors. But Mistral’s funding and valuation trail those of its biggest Silicon Valley rivals by an order of magnitude. Anthropic last week closed a $13 billion funding round at a valuation of $183 billion.

Europe has put more emphasis on homegrown AI as tensions have grown with the U.S. over trade and tech policy. In February, Vice President JD Vance told a Paris summit that the U.S. was winning the race to build the best AI chips and algorithms, and intended “to keep it that way.”

Mistral Chief Executive Arthur Mensch has said he and his co-founders left Google and Meta Platforms in part to prove that Europe could challenge Silicon Valley on AI. Their plan is to remain independent by offering companies in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere a cost-effective alternative to companies like OpenAI or Anthropic, without turning to Chinese options like DeepSeek.

Mensch said in June that growing demand for Mistral’s AI models put the company on pace to earn revenue of more than $100 million a year.

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