South Korea's SAMSUNG and French AI startup Mistral AI have formed a strategic partnership centered on semiconductor design and manufacturing. SAMSUNG also served as the lead investor in Mistral's latest funding round, and the two companies plan to deploy on-premises AI across SAMSUNG's chip operations to shorten development cycles and improve yields. The partnership was announced on September 9, alongside a South Korea-France state summit held in Paris.

Bringing On-Premises AI Into Chip Development and Manufacturing

Under the partnership, SAMSUNG will integrate Mistral's AI services and technology, including its flagship large language model Mistral Large, across its semiconductor operations. The goal is to build customized, on-premises AI models tailored to SAMSUNG's needs. Because chip design data and manufacturing process information are highly sensitive, the companies aim to process everything entirely within SAMSUNG's own infrastructure rather than routing it through external clouds, balancing security with operational flexibility.

As chipmaking processes become increasingly fine-grained, fabs face a growing need to analyze massive volumes of data in real time. Through this partnership, SAMSUNG plans to apply AI models to defect detection and equipment optimization, aiming to accelerate development cycles, improve manufacturing precision, and stabilize yields across its advanced memory and logic chips.

Jun Young-hyun, Vice Chairman and CEO of Samsung Electronics' Device Solutions (DS) Division, said that meeting the growing complexity of AI chip design and manufacturing requires continuous innovation in semiconductor technology.

Mistral Raises About €3 Billion, Led by SAMSUNG

Mistral raised roughly €3 billion (about 540 billion yen) in its Series D round, pushing its valuation past €21 billion (about 3.76 trillion yen). The round is described as one of the largest private tech funding rounds in Europe since Mistral was founded in 2023. SAMSUNG led the round with a strategic equity stake, laying the groundwork for long-term technology collaboration. Other participants included EQT's Scale-Up Europe Fund and private equity firm PSG Equity, along with chipmaking equipment giant ASML, AI chip leader NVIDIA, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and funds affiliated with asset manager BlackRock.

Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO of Mistral, said AI is reshaping how complex technology is built, from silicon to software, and that he is proud to support SAMSUNG Electronics with Mistral's expertise in electronics and semiconductors to help improve how chips are designed and manufactured.

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SAMSUNG Also Partners With OpenAI and Anthropic, Building a Supply Network for AI Labs

For SAMSUNG, this partnership is part of a broader push to deepen ties with AI companies. The company has already been expanding collaboration with OpenAI on joint development of next-generation AI chips, and is reportedly in early-stage talks with Anthropic on custom chip manufacturing. SAMSUNG is said to be the only company that can offer both leading-edge memory and foundry capacity under one roof, strengthening its position as a viable alternative to TSMC for major AI labs seeking manufacturing partners.

The push to embed AI into chip design and manufacturing is spreading across the industry, not just at SAMSUNG. As demand for advanced chips used to train and run AI models surges, using AI to make chip production itself more efficient is becoming a factor that could shape competitiveness going forward.

Summary

SAMSUNG and Mistral AI have entered a strategic partnership centered on on-premises AI for semiconductor design and manufacturing. SAMSUNG led Mistral's large funding round while also taking an equity stake, and plans to use AI for defect detection and equipment optimization to shorten development cycles and improve yields. Alongside its parallel partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, SAMSUNG's moves appear to be part of a larger strategy to build a semiconductor supply network for AI developers.

*Thumbnail image is AI-generated for illustrative purposes.