PARIS — Samsung Electronics (005930) has entered a strategic partnership with Mistral AI, Europe's leading artificial intelligence company, marking its full-scale entry into the global race for AI factory leadership.
Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee and Mistral AI Chief Executive Arthur Mensch signed the partnership on the 8th in Paris, covering joint development of manufacturing AI models and research and development cooperation. The agreement was concluded at a business roundtable held immediately after the Korea-France summit.
The two companies will combine chip design and production data accumulated by Samsung's Device Solutions division with Mistral AI's high-efficiency AI models. The goal is to build a chip-specialized AI that can be applied broadly from the design stage through production processes.
Mistral AI is a French company founded by researchers from Google DeepMind and Meta under Mensch's leadership. Regarded as one of Europe's leading generative AI firms, it has been expanding its position in the industrial AI market, where sectors such as finance, manufacturing and energy demand high levels of information security.
Samsung plans to develop AI models optimized for its Device Solutions division's proprietary data, using Mistral AI solutions including the Mistral Large large language model.
The resulting AI will be deployed in stages for data analysis in chip design and production sites, defect prediction and manufacturing process optimization. Samsung expects that as the scope of AI use widens, it can shorten chip development timelines while simultaneously improving production efficiency and product quality.
The partnership extends beyond AI model development. The companies will jointly build an AI platform optimized for semiconductor operations, along with a management system to run the models reliably on the factory floor.
Samsung intends to expand the cooperation across its entire Device Solutions division, including memory, foundry and logic. Over the longer term, it aims to build an AI-based semiconductor ecosystem that reaches beyond Samsung to its customers and suppliers.
Mistral AI also raised 3 billion euros (about 4.68 trillion won) through a Series D funding round led by Samsung. The investment is intended to establish a strategic relationship capable of supporting joint research and new business ventures.
DS Data Meets Mistral Technology
AI Runs on Internal Servers, Reshaping Design and Manufacturing
Cooperation to Widen Across Memory and Foundry
With Samsung Electronics and Mistral AI signing a strategic partnership, South Korea and France have forged a new alliance in AI and semiconductor manufacturing.
At the heart of the partnership is manufacturing AI cooperation that goes beyond a simple equity investment. The aim is to apply Mistral's AI technology on Samsung's chip production floor to raise yields and process efficiency. Beyond supplying AI chips such as DRAM and high-bandwidth memory, the plan is to hasten an era in which chips are made using AI.
Global manufacturers are shifting from software-defined factories, which automate processes using ultrafast networks and robots, toward AI factories in which AI makes decisions on its own based on data and lifts productivity. But security remains a major obstacle to wider adoption: dependence on a particular AI platform raises the possibility that core manufacturing data leaks outside the company.
Mistral's AI addresses that concern because it is built as a sovereign AI layer that allows companies to retain control over the AI factory and its data. Using Mistral's AI, a company can keep control over its data, models, computing and operating environment. Its strength is that sensitive manufacturing data need not be sent to an external cloud while AI is still put to use inside the company. That is the background to Mistral AI being chosen as a key Samsung partner in chip manufacturing, where technology security is regarded as a core competitive edge.
A Mistral official said the company's AI includes data that never leaves the organization, models that can be controlled and customized, computing infrastructure that can be self-operated and is predictable, and an operating environment that is fully controllable and auditable.
Samsung plans to accelerate manufacturing innovation by applying advanced AI to semiconductor research, development and production processes together with Mistral.
Manufacturing difficulty has been rising steadily as chip processes shrink from 3 nanometers to 2 nanometers and below. Chipmakers are devoting all their resources to securing high yields at those ultrafine nodes.
As a single wafer passes through hundreds of process steps, countless variables including equipment, materials, temperature and pressure determine yields, which in turn feed directly into profitability. That is why analysts say the decisive battleground in global chip competition is moving beyond process technology itself to the question of who installs manufacturing AI in their factories first.
AI can analyze correlations among variables that people cannot track individually, doing so in real time, and detect warning signs in advance. Lowering defect rates and raising yields in this way could bring significant change to chip manufacturing competitiveness.
Jun Young-hyun, head of Samsung Electronics' Device Solutions division, said AI capability that can use large volumes of data safely and precisely is emerging as a core competitive strength as the complexity of chip design and manufacturing rises rapidly. He added that the company will build AI models and platforms specialized for the semiconductor industry with Mistral AI and set a new standard for AI-based chip innovation.
Mensch, founder and CEO of Mistral AI, said AI is changing the way advanced technology is created, from semiconductors to software. He added that through cooperation with Samsung Electronics, the company will contribute to advances in chip design and manufacturing and across the global AI value chain.
