Institutional Bulletin: Mistral AI raises €385m, and Line raises $140m

The cryptocurrency industry is attracting an increasing number of institutional players. This is reflected in both new investments in infrastructure and the growing attention companies are giving to Bitcoin as an asset class. The most important events of the past few weeks are in ForkLog’s overview.

French AI startup Mistral AI raises €385m

Founded in Paris, the AI project Mistral AI raised €385m in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Ventures.

The funds will be directed toward open-source software development and building a European competitor to U.S. tech giants.

According to the agency, investors valued the startup at $2 billion. The round also included BNP Paribas, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and others.

A former DeepMind researcher founded Mistral AI together with Meta alumni Timothy Lacroix and Guillaume Lample. The startup specialises in open-source AI tooling and the development of chatbots. The company plans to open access to its products in early 2024.

Line’s messaging unit LINE NEXT raises $140m to develop NFT division

LINE NEXT, the Line Messenger operator’s subsidiary focused on non-fungible tokens, raised $140m to “popularise the Web3 ecosystem.”

The funding round was led by Crescendo Equity Partners, an affiliate of Peter Thiel. The latter will join the Finschia Foundation as a board member.

The organisation will launch a global NFT platform called DOSI in January 2024.

The LINE NEXT team plans to help brands “transfer ownership” of digital products and enable trading of them. The services will be built on the public Finschia blockchain.

Unblock raises $15m for flare-gas mining

The mining company Unblock Global raised more than $15m from Crusoe Energy, Pampa Energia and Petrocuyo. The founder of the firm, Thomas Ocampo, said.

“We have become the second flare-gas miner in the world,” he wrote, showing the facilities.

Unblock intends to mine cryptocurrency from flare gas at Vaca Muerta in Argentina. It is the second-largest shale gas field in the world.

According to the U.S. ambassador to Argentina, Mark Stanley, such an approach to mining “will help the country meet its climate goals, save energy and allow for earnings.”

a16z and Founders Fund lead $13.5m Dynamic Labs funding round

Dynamic Labs, a Web3 platform for authentication and authorization, closed a Series A financing round of $13.5m. It was led by a16z and Founders Fund with participation from Castle Island Ventures, Breyer Capital and other investors.

The startup develops technologies to streamline the onboarding process.

Dynamic Labs offers a customisable ‘all-in-one’ service that can either tuck wallet technology behind the scenes for less experienced users or place it at the forefront for Web3 users.

The startup plans to release new tools to integrate FaceID and TouchID into the wallet design. The funds will be used to hire specialists and for marketing.

Media reports that Anthropic plans to raise $750m

The AI startup Anthropic is in talks to raise $750m to continue developing its chatbot. The Information reported this, citing sources within the company.

The company’s valuation ahead of the expected funding round was $18.4 billion, insiders said.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees who left the company over disagreements about the business direction. The startup is developing the Claude chatbot.

The firm positions its product as a safe neural network designed to minimise potential harm from artificial intelligence. The project is also registered as a so-called ‘public-benefit corporation’.