French artificial intelligence startup Mistral said on Wednesday it would invest 1.2 billion euros ($1.43 billion) to build digital infrastructure in Sweden, including artificial intelligence data centers.

The news comes as Europe scrambles to build the infrastructure needed to power rapidly developing artificial intelligence tools in a bid to establish technological sovereignty amid rising geopolitical tensions.

Mistral said the funds will promote the development of AI data centers, advanced computing capabilities and localized AI capabilities.

Founded in 2023, Mistral has become one of Europe’s leading artificial intelligence companies Raised €1.7 billion in financing In September, the valuation reached 11.7 billion euros. Dutch chip equipment manufacturer ASML This round of financing is 1.3 billion euros.

The company also includes big tech giants NVIDIA and Microsoft Investors include DST Global, Andreessen Horowitz, Bpifrance, General Catalyst and Index Ventures.

“This investment is a concrete step towards building independent capabilities in AI in Europe,” Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch said in a statement.

“By offering a fully vertical service that processes and stores data locally, we are strengthening Europe’s strategic autonomy and competitiveness,” he added. “This lays the foundation for a European AI cloud that can serve industry, public institutions and researchers at scale.”

The company initially focused on building large language models (LLMs) and has since expanded its offerings to support the infrastructure needed for artificial intelligence.

In June, it launched Mistral Compute, which the company said offers an integrated stack including services such as graphics processing units (GPUs), application programming interfaces (APIs) and a fully managed platform-as-a-service.

The Nordic country is considered a prime location for European computing facilities, boasting the region’s lower temperatures and lowest energy costs.

In July, OpenAI announced it would launch Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Data Centeras part of its Stargate program.

As part of the investment, Mistral will partner with Swedish company EcoDataCenter to deploy “large-scale” AI computing, marking the French startup’s first AI infrastructure investment outside its home market.

The facility is scheduled to open in 2027 and will support the development and operation of Mistral’s next-generation artificial intelligence model.

Although Mistral is Europe’s best-funded builder of LL.M. courses, having raised $2.9 billion, it still lags behind U.S. rivals with huge private funding rounds, according to deal statistics platform Dealroom.

OpenAI is looking for a possible solution Hundreds of billions of dollars in financingsources told CNBC this week, while Anthropic Signed an investment letter of intent Completed a $10 billion financing round in January.