Mistral AI, the scale-up developing Europe’s best-known LLM, has announced the acquisition of the Linz-based start-up Emmi AI. With this move, Mistral aims to become “the world’s first major laboratory dedicated to production and engineering in the field of artificial intelligence”, says Johannes Brandstetter, co-founder of Emmi AI, according to press releases (including the one published by ORF, from which this article is taken). The sale price has not been disclosed, but rumours suggest it amounts to a figure in the hundreds of millions of euros, the majority of which is expected to be in the form of a share swap.
Mistral, founded in 2023, is regarded as the European rival to companies such as OpenAI and Google and is currently valued at twelve billion euros. It is a European leader in the field of large language models (LLMs), offers its products in open-source versions as well, and has already established several data centres across Europe.
Emmi AI, founded in 2024, has developed unique expertise at the intersection of AI and physics.
“Mistral has decided to be bold and take the lead in a new market,” adds Brandstetter, who is set to become Vice President of AI for Science and will oversee the company’s research activities in the field of AI for industrial engineering and basic research. Manufacturing and industrial engineering represent the next major challenge in the race for AI.
The aim is to accelerate the introduction of AI-based development processes, particularly thanks to Emmi AI’s expertise in the field of Physics AI, where AI models simulate physical processes such as flows, temperature trends and material deformations. “Together, we have the key expertise to design and build the next generation of aircraft, vehicles and semiconductors,” adds Brandstetter (centre in the photo with the other two co-founders).
Linz will be home to an official Mistral office, alongside Paris, London, Amsterdam, Munich, San Francisco and Singapore, and the workforce will grow from 30 to 50 people, according to Brandstetter. The co-founders of Emmi AI, Dennis Just and Miks Mikelson, will be responsible for client relations.
After studying physics in Vienna, Brandstetter obtained a PhD in high-energy physics at CERN and worked at JKU and the University of Amsterdam with his mentors Sepp Hochreiter and Max Welling. The former brought him back to JKU in 2023 from Microsoft Research in Amsterdam. Emmi AI was founded in 2024 and in 2025 received one of the largest start-up funding rounds in Austria, amounting to €15 million.
JKU Rector Stefan Koch expressed his satisfaction in a written statement: “The JKU spin-off Emmi AI demonstrates the university’s ambition to help shape the future on a global scale in such important areas as artificial intelligence. The acquisition by Mistral AI highlights the importance and international relevance of our research in this field, as well as the outstanding capabilities of our researchers, such as Johannes Brandstetter.”
According to the Austrian Minister for Economic Affairs, Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer, the agreement demonstrates that Linz is well equipped and has become a “beacon of hope for industrial AI in Europe”. “Europe needs expertise in AI to compete on the global stage and become less reliant on the United States and China. We must therefore do everything we can to strengthen European companies such as Mistral.”
Congratulations to Brandstetter and his team also came from the Governor of Upper Austria, Thomas Stelzer: “The fact that a leading international player in the field of artificial intelligence such as Mistral is relying on Upper Austria’s expertise and investing here demonstrates once again that our province has already established itself as a strong hub for future technologies.”
“This strategic expansion consolidates Mistral’s position in industrial AI and establishes us as the partner of choice for manufacturers in high-risk sectors such as aviation, automotive and semiconductors,” says Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO of Mistral AI. “This acquisition marks a turning point for industrial innovation. We enable our customers to solve the most complex technical problems,” says Guillaume Lample, co-founder of Mistral AI.
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