Samsung Electronics and Naver have both entered the European sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) market through the French company MistralAI. This development follows a state visit by President Lee Jae-myung to France, which facilitated diplomatic efforts to position the two companies as key players in European AI policy.
According to the IT industry on September 9, Samsung Electronics and Naver Cloud established partnerships with MistralAI during a Korea-France business roundtable held at the Élysée Palace in Paris on September 8 (local time).
President Lee Jae-myung and French President Emmanuel Macron were present, with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong attending the event. Samsung signed an investment agreement with MistralAI under the name of Vice President Lee Jong-myung. Naver is set to explore joint global market entry strategies based on its partnership with MistralAI in the sovereign AI sector.
Samsung's investment, led by the company, is part of MistralAI's Series D funding round, which raised €3 billion (approximately 4.7 trillion won). This marks the largest equity investment ever secured by a European tech company. Following this round, MistralAI's valuation has surpassed €21 billion (about 33 trillion won). Samsung collaborated with the EU's ScaleUp Europe fund and existing investor PSG Equity to lead the round, with new investors including Advent and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, while existing investors such as ASML, NVIDIA, and Salesforce Ventures also participated.
MistralAI is gaining attention not just as a promising startup but as a core model for the EU's sovereign AI policy. It has been identified as one of the few alternatives for Europe to maintain its data sovereignty in an AI market increasingly dominated by U.S. tech giants. Samsung's investment positions the company at the center of this trend, with industry analysts noting that it provides South Korea an opportunity to engage with the EU's AI policy framework.
Naver's memorandum of understanding (MOU) differs from Samsung's approach. Naver Cloud had previously established a comprehensive partnership with MistralAI in the manufacturing AI sector on July 8. The discussions regarding joint entry into the sovereign AI market extend this collaboration beyond manufacturing to encompass the entire global sovereign AI business.
MistralAI has already built a track record with major European manufacturers such as Airbus, BMW, and ASML. Naver plans to integrate its cloud infrastructure with these references, achieving results in domestic manufacturing before expanding into the global market.
Samsung's equity investment strategy aims to secure growth benefits and access to technology from MistralAI, while Naver's strategy focuses on leveraging cloud and infrastructure collaboration to adapt proven industrial AI use cases from Europe for domestic and international markets. This structure allows both semiconductor hardware and cloud software sectors to simultaneously enter the European market through the same partner.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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