By Elizabeth Howcroft and Leo Marchandon
PARIS, May 28 (Reuters) – Mistral, widely seen as Europe’s leading AI company and its best hope of challenging top U.S. peers, on Thursday defended military uses of the technology as it unveiled a new French data centre.
Mistral CEO and co-founder Arthur Mensch told reporters that Europe needed its own AI tools because rivals and adversaries were already using them.
His comments countered criticism from Pope Leo, who on Monday urged international regulation to curb the development of AI systems and warned against the use of AI in warfare.
“We’re all for peace, but if you look at our rivals and adversaries in the world, they’re using artificial intelligence […] As long as we have adversaries that are threatening, and they are threatening, we do need to have our own capabilities,” Mensch told reporters when asked about the Pope’s comments.
EUROPEAN AI ALTERNATIVE
Mistral, valued at about 11.7 billion euros ($13.4 billion) last year, supplies the French military and has positioned itself as a European alternative to U.S. technology giants at a time when governments in the region are pushing for greater technological independence.
That push also extends to computing infrastructure.
Mistral said it would build a new data centre in Les Ulis, France, with 10 megawatts of computing power, in the second half of 2026. The move, part of a broader €4 billion investment strategy, will complement existing facilities in Sweden and France and help the company reach a planned 200 megawatts by the end of 2027 and 1 gigawatt by 2030.
Mistral also announced new customers, including Airbus across commercial, defence and space activities.
The expansion coincides with growing resistance to data-centre projects in some communities and spreading unease about AI, especially among younger people, even as Europe tries to build enough computing capacity to stay in the race.
“I think there is some expected anguish around artificial intelligence, in that it’s profoundly changing the way people are working,” Mensch said.
“It’s not the first time that people are a bit anguished at something coming up. But we’ll be fine. We’ll find a way to use it efficiently,” he added.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft in Paris and by Leo Marchandon in Gdansk; Editing by Mark Potter and Matt Scuffham)
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