Samsung and Mistral AI in Talks on Memory Chip Partnership

Samsung Electronics and French AI startup Mistral AI are in discussions about cooperation in the AI memory sector. Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch visited Samsung's Hwaseong campus in South Korea on April 5, 2026, meeting with senior Samsung representatives including semiconductor business vice chairman Jun Young-hyun and Chairman Lee Jae-yong.

The talks center on Mistral AI securing a stable supply of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips for its expanding infrastructure, including a new data center near Paris set to begin operations in Q2 2026. The facility will deploy approximately 14,000 of NVIDIA's latest GPUs, driving significant demand for advanced AI memory.

Samsung is one of only three manufacturers globally producing this class of AI memory. Industry sources suggest the collaboration could extend beyond memory to Samsung's foundry business if Mistral AI moves toward designing its own AI chips. There is also potential for Samsung to embed Mistral's models directly into Galaxy devices to strengthen its on-device AI capabilities.

Mistral AI, founded in 2023 by former engineers from Google DeepMind and Meta, has become Europe's leading AI company with models like Mistral Large and the Le Chat chatbot.

For enterprise leaders, this signals a maturing European AI supply chain, where European AI companies are now securing independent hardware relationships, reducing dependency on US and Chinese infrastructure providers.