France, March 30 -- Europe's leading artificial intelligence company Mistral AI has secured over €750 million ($830 million) in loans to fund a major expansion of its computing power, underlining Europe's growing ambition to compete with the US and China in the global AI race.

The Paris-based company will use the financing to purchase 13,800 advanced chips from Nvidia, forming the backbone of a new data centre near the French capital. The deal, to be announced on Monday, marks Mistral's first foray into debt markets and signals rising investor confidence in Europe's homegrown AI sector.

The funding was arranged by a consortium of seven banks, including BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole CIB, HSBC and MUFG. Together, they are backing a p...