Maria Larsson to Lead Mistral’s Nordic Expansion

Maria Larsson has joined French AI company Mistral after more than four years at Snowflake. She will help develop the company’s business in the Nordic region, where its focus is on European and sovereign AI.

Founded three years ago, Mistral has emerged as a European challenger to US and Chinese AI companies, with a focus on sovereignty and open language models. The company recently raised €3 billion in a funding round that valued it at about €21 billion. Mistral said the funds will support the development of more powerful AI models and advanced AI research as it competes with larger companies including OpenAI and Anthropic.

Larsson will play a key role in building Mistral’s Nordic organization. At Snowflake, she helped manufacturing companies use AI technology. Earlier in her career, she worked for Microsoft, Dell and Salesforce.

“I’m joining what is truly the coolest team in AI, to help leading players in the region benefit from the most advanced AI models and create real, significant business value,” Larsson wrote on LinkedIn.

Mistral’s expansion comes amid growing interest in digital sovereignty and the ability to run AI models with greater control over data and infrastructure, according to Techtidningen.