Mistral AI's first summit felt less like a startup conference and more like a campaign rally for Europe's AI ambitions.

The French AI startup, founded just three years ago, packed Paris's Le Carrousel du Louvre — the event space beneath the Louvre's famous glass pyramid — on Thursday with executives from SAP, BNP Paribas, Accenture, Airbus, government officials, engineers, and startup founders.

Giant screens flanked a catwalk-style stage, and Mistral executives appeared casually dressed in jeans and T-shirts — a look that felt more like Silicon Valley than Paris.

Several attendees told me they walked away with the same impression: Europe is finally trying to build its own AI ecosystem rather than relying entirely on American tech giants.

A 'huge' turnout

"What struck me is Mistral announced this event just a month ago, and the turnout is pretty good," said Martin Zeps, who leads the AI business at Latvia's largest mobile operator. "I thought it would be a small gathering, but this is huge."

James Shannon, a sales director at GrowthBook, said he was struck by "the trajectory and the speed" with which Mistral had grown its customer base and carved out a place in the AI market.

While OpenAI is widely associated with consumers and Anthropic with enterprise customers, he said Mistral appeared focused on large-scale custom AI models.

"It feels like a huge moment for Mistral," Shannon told Business Insider, calling the summit "a really good PR moment for them."

That momentum was central to Mistral's message throughout the day.

During the opening keynote, CEO Arthur Mensch and cofounders Timothée Lacroix and Guillaume Lample laid out a vision for building a European AI stack.

Mensch said that AI only creates value when applied to real business problems, while Lacroix detailed the company's growing infrastructure footprint, including new data center capacity near Paris. Lample, meanwhile, emphasized Mistral's commitment to open-source models that customers can customize using their own proprietary data.

The message echoed warnings Mensch made to French lawmakers earlier this month that Europe has just two years to build enough AI infrastructure to avoid becoming what he called an American AI "vassal state."

Yet despite being valued at roughly $13.6 billion and emerging as Europe's most prominent AI startup ahead of rivals such as Germany's Aleph Alpha, France's H Company, and Sweden's Lovable, Mistral remains dwarfed by US rivals.

The likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google's Gemini have attracted tens of billions of dollars in funding and are racing to build vast AI infrastructure networks. Just this week, Anthropic raised $65 billion — nearly five times Mistral's total value — at a valuation of nearly $1 trillion.

Europe wants control over its AI future

Several executives said growing concerns about where data is stored are driving demand for European alternatives.

Jan van den Bremen, who is Accenture's technology lead across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, said governments and companies alike have become more conscious about data sovereignty.

"We have become a data-driven economy," he told Business Insider. "You need to know where your data is and what happens to your data."

That sentiment was echoed onstage by Rodolphe Saadé, chairman and CEO of shipping giant CMA CGM, which has partnered with Mistral for two years. Saadé said geopolitical uncertainty and the need to protect data made having a French AI partner increasingly attractive.

"Having a French solution is definitely helpful," he said.

Charles Holive, chief AI officer at BNP Paribas CIB, said Mistral's open-source model allows companies like his to run AI systems on their own infrastructure while keeping costs under control.

Andrew Parker, head of partnerships and business development at 7SG, said it's clear governments and enterprises across Europe are increasingly trying to reduce their dependence on American cloud and AI providers.

"They're all trying to build their own little basic private technology stacks, clouds," Parker said, citing the risk of the US CLOUD Act, a 2018 law that allows American authorities to compel US-based cloud providers to hand over data stored overseas under certain circumstances.

A 'late player'

Despite Europe lagging behind the US in AI infrastructure and investment, Parker said the region may benefit from entering the race later.

"There's almost an advantage to being a late player," he said. "You can look back at history and say, 'This is where everybody messed up.'"

Parker also said Europe's approach to AI appeared more coordinated between governments and private companies than in the US. He pointed to the large number of ministers and government officials speaking at Mistral's summit.

"In the US, it's hyper-capitalistic — business comes first," he said. "Here, government and private AI are moving hand in hand."

Still, not everyone left fully satisfied.

Amira Soltani, sales director Europe at Zayo Europe, said she left wanting more technical detail.

"We hear about compute, we hear about services, but we really don't understand how it works," she said. "It's much more marketing."

That may have been the point of the summit, though.

European giants appeared to be rallying around Mistral because the company has become a symbol of something larger: the belief that Europe can still build, control, and profit from the next major wave of technology.

Despite the enthusiasm, Parker acknowledged the scale of the challenge ahead, saying that Europe still trails the US on AI infrastructure, talent, and investment.

"Europe is kind of waking up to catch up," Parker said. "It's good to finally see this is happening."