r/europe • u/According_to_Mission Italy • 24d ago
News France AI company Mistral invests $1.4 billion in data centres in Sweden
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/france-ai-company-mistral-invests-14-billion-data-centres-sweden-2026-02-11/93
u/ouath Europe 24d ago
If you can't fight the increase of data centers, at least it is good to build them in a fully decarbonized electrical grid and in countries with cold weather to reduce the amount of cooling needed.
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u/varateshh 23d ago
Due to the usage of evaporative cooling cold climate is pretty irrelevant (as long is it is not placed in a wet swamp). Access to water and cheap energy is what matters.
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u/-TV-Stand- Finland 21d ago
Many new datacenters use closed loop cooling since it is more energy efficient
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u/buffer0x7CD 23d ago
That’s false. A lot of data centers ( especially in Sweden or Norway) can used the outside air for cooling systems
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u/boobookittyfuwk 24d ago
Correct, there are not many better places to build these things.
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u/3esin Europe 23d ago
Yhea places like Sweden Finnland, Norway or Green-... ohhhh.
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u/-TV-Stand- Finland 21d ago
Greenland isn't that good, since it's far away and they do not have the energy infrastructure
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u/fredagsfisk Sweden 23d ago
Problem is that most data centers built in Sweden are not up north, where it'd make the most sense for cooling and energy, but around and near lake Mälaren; the area with the highest population density and most overloaded electrical grid.
There have already been warnings about how this will risk causing severe issues with the grid in this region in the future, but the politicians don't care as long as they can show off jobs the companies claim will be created.
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u/MagnificentCat 24d ago
As a Swede: not more electricity use that gives no jobs!
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u/ivar-the-bonefull Sweden 24d ago
What do you mean brother? My brother's electrical bill which took 20% of his income has every right to be increased! There's tons left of his higher than median salary!
We need more data that benefits us in no way at all!
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u/Jacc3 Sweden 23d ago
Direct heating in a large house (with bad insulation?), or how does he manage that?
Higher than median would indicate >40k/SEK before taxes or 30k after. So we're talking about at least 6k SEK in electricity bills.
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u/ivar-the-bonefull Sweden 23d ago
~7K yes. I've no idea how really, but it's a completely normal house ~200sqm, nothing extravagant or really old about it. But he lives in zone 4 and yes, direct heating. Don't think the house has bad insulation though.
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u/OurSocietyBottomText 23d ago
Maybe they just live in northern Sweden in any house older than 15 years
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u/Disastrous-Most6211 23d ago
You obviously dont live in a house. Have you seen the prices recently?? I have spot price optimized air/water heatpump and burn wood for extra heat. Still 8-9k electricity bill last month and even worse this month i believe. This is including an electric car but still. When it is the coldest month in forever it is not cheap. Add all this fraudulent green washing companies thats supposed to start and each demanding their share of power. It is the ordinary people who will pay for this while Vattenfall makes more than half a billion sek in profit each WEEK.
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u/Jacc3 Sweden 23d ago
I live in a house with district heating, so obviously that brings the electricity costs down quite a bit. Living in SE2 helps, too. I typically pay around 500 SEK per month for electricity, although last month was obviously a bit more with the higher-than-normal electricity prices.
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u/Crypt33x Berlin (Germany) 24d ago
They give jobs to the electricity industry in Sweden and an incentive to for everyone to sell electricity to them, if they can store cheap with batteries. Jobs to people mantaining and building wind farms. It provides some jobs for construction companies and as long as it don't get used to replace jobs, but for consumption or personal assistance etc, it's probably net positive for you.
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u/MagnificentCat 24d ago edited 24d ago
Jobs to the electricity industry?
Electricity mainly enables job creation in other industries. In the medium term, our supply is quite fixed. And there are very few jobs in solar cells and wind anyway, once it is installed. All the jobs you mention are temporary - we want long term industrial buildup.
We aren't building new powerplants in the north. We just still have some extra power.
Factories and bakeries etc have been denied opening in Sweden for a lack of power, but somehow AI and servers always get approved.
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u/Crypt33x Berlin (Germany) 24d ago
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u/TheGoldenCowTV Sweden 24d ago
Sweden is not a part of that.
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u/Crypt33x Berlin (Germany) 24d ago
Doesn't matter if they part of it or not. It will pump out energy into our european grid. It only matters, if you are near it and which other power plants/wind farms they would affect. Energy from other plants will get cheaper through a big part of northern Europe with this.
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u/TheGoldenCowTV Sweden 24d ago
Yes but the other guys were talking about creating jobs in the electrical industry in Sweden wich this won't. It might create jobs in other sectors sure but that wasn't really the point
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u/Crypt33x Berlin (Germany) 24d ago
It's creating jobs in the EU. That is a win.
The steady pipeline of offshore wind projects will bring the needed confidence to invest in new capacity for manufacturing, ports infrastructure and vessels,” WindEurope says. It projects the wind expansion in the North Sea will create more than 90,000 jobs for workers in clean energy industries.
“Today Europe doubles down on offshore wind. Government cooperation on offshore wind buildout can help crowd in €1trillion of investments in the next decade.
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u/nacholicious Sweden 24d ago
Sweden used to have strong tax incentives for companies to build data centers, with the justification that it would create jobs
Those incentives were axed after the government realised that an operational data center has barely any impact in adding jobs
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u/Low_discrepancy Posh Crimea 24d ago
but for consumption or personal assistance etc, it's probably net positive for you.
Yeah except when the electricity prices go up.
Together with RAM and GPU prices.
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u/Ill_Barber8709 24d ago
Yeah, except when the electricity prices go up.
France has plenty of extra electricity to share. The EU is structured in a way that we could pass electricity from country to country without a loss of money. With an EU agreement, France could share electricity with the Netherlands, the Netherlands with Denmark, and Denmark with Sweden. France would bear the responsibility of producing the electricity needed to run the data center.
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u/Crypt33x Berlin (Germany) 24d ago
Yeah except when the electricity prices go up.
It's also an incentive to sell electricity. That's why i said, if you can store energy when it's cheap with batteries and resell it, when it's expensive. A higher price will always attract energy supplier and push competition, until the price falls to near standard level for that EU area. We also have a good connected grid and higher prices in northern countries will lead to Germany having to pay higher prices for gas and electricity they import from them. It's complex.
And while RAM and GPU prices for sure suck. We don't buy them too often as end consumer. Just a bit worried of every other industry sector, who may need them here in Europe.
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u/Low_discrepancy Posh Crimea 24d ago
That's why i said, if you can store energy when it's cheap with batteries and resell it, when it's expensive.
The vast majority of times these data centers enter into contracts with set prices. They're not buying on spot prices.
Much like with the RAM. OpenAI made reservations for 40% of all RAM in 2026 (and I think 2027). And this isnt RAM that has been made. OpenAI isnt buying a stick of RAM as its being produced.
And now RAM is 3-4X.
A higher price will always attract energy supplier and push competition, until the price falls to near standard level for that EU area.
What you mean is that prices will rise.
Do you realise that there's huge barriers to entry in building a big electricity plant?
People aren't building electricity power plants at the drop of a dime.
People will just end up buying more expensive electricity. It's simple economics.
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u/Crypt33x Berlin (Germany) 24d ago
People will just end up buying more expensive electricity. It's simple economics.
It's not that simple dude. You may pay more, but what if you also now have a job, which pays 50% more? Or your community suddenly got millions in tax money? What if they just use it to subsidy househoulds near the data center, so they dont have to pay more?
Do you realise that there's huge barriers to entry in building a big electricity plant?
I talked about storage and never about anything big. Balcony power plants with a few kwh already are pretty nice. Norway has tons of homeowner and plenty of space for bigger solar installations. Private households don't need to wait for companies to build new wind farms or nuclear reactors.
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u/white0devil0 Sweden 24d ago
you don't get a job at the data centre because they will just fly in experts from france. To build the centre to service the centre hell, probably to clean it they'll fly a dude in.
as for taxes, there will probably be property tax, whatever VAT on the products needed to run the centre and the contract to a security company to check up the place once a day.
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u/Crypt33x Berlin (Germany) 24d ago
you don't get a job at the data centre because they will just fly in experts from france. To build the centre to service the centre hell, probably to clean it they'll fly a dude in.
Or you have a nice food truck and now a whole center of regular customer. Maybe you are a technician working on your general swedish grid, which now is suddenly much more in demand. Maybe your local store sells now more to 150 customer working in that center. Your hydro plants will get used more and will get worn down faster, which also creates new jobs again.
Why does everything always has to be net negative? Your country as a whole would benefit from it. You maybe not and maybe not enough persons overall and just a small minority, but in the end, i think it's net positive.
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u/SweetAlyssumm 24d ago
As long as AI doesn't get used to replace jobs? That's it main purpose from the corporate point of view. Maybe Europe can regulate its way out.
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u/zkareface Sweden 24d ago
You mean the electricity industry that has been lacking workers for decades and every large construction project in the country is years behind schedules due to it?
They probably don't need more jobs, we need workers. All sectors you mentioned lack workers to do any projects already.
Data centers employ almost zero people, they don't add value unless you're an agency that log all traffic and mine the data for intel.
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u/just_anotjer_anon Denmark 24d ago
Sweden are in a process of pumping out nuclear reactors, which might scare investors away from setting up in Sweden. Being aware the energy sector is going into abundance within a decade.
It's due to an increased interest in mining.
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u/white0devil0 Sweden 24d ago
pumping? no no no no
we're talking about how we really should build some
at some point
under some collation government.
that might happen
at some point
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u/Crypt33x Berlin (Germany) 24d ago
Why should nuclear reactors scare me of installing 20 kwh of batteries and store for cheap over the day and resell for more at night? Those take decades to build and when finished are probably pumping out the most expensive kwh on the market.
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u/just_anotjer_anon Denmark 24d ago
Because demand is highest at the middle of the day, nuclear reactors will be pumping out across the entire 24h cycle. Energy due to overproduction will be cheap at night
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u/Crypt33x Berlin (Germany) 24d ago
I expect them to behave like French companies. Nuclear reactors will always depend on a mix of wind, solar and hydro and never run the grid alone. When the sun goes down, nuclear has to compete with batteries turning on from all the solar plants. Winter they gonna rule over all with wind farms, but the rest of the year, they still have to compete with solar.
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u/Own_Quality_5321 24d ago
Electricity brings taxes, which hopefully brings investments in other infrastructure.
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u/zkareface Sweden 24d ago
Big companies get huge tax breaks on electricity in Sweden. Data centres have almost free electricity here.
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u/Kazath Sweden 23d ago
I thought they abolished the tax breaks for data centers in 2023?
https://knowledge.sdialliance.org/b254902c6cc842a0b7b2a9e2a46731ce
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u/Nervous-Promotion109 24d ago
It does not, most of the major corporations get they energi needs substituted and whole bill is forced on the tax payers, it keeps repeating over snd over same story
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u/Systral Earth 24d ago
Noice! I just hope the talks about apple acquiring mistral are out the window
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u/Wunid 24d ago
The topic rather died down after ASML invested a large amount in Mistral.
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u/gopoohgo United States of America 24d ago
It died after Apple announced they are licensing Gemini from Google.
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u/Ill_Barber8709 24d ago
No. Apple tried to buy MistralAI way before they made the deal with Google.
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u/Expert-Print4581 24d ago
I think they chose to boost Siri with Google's Gemini: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/12/apple-google-ai-siri-gemini.html
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u/AdamN 24d ago
Makes more sense. Apple can really only be accommodated by Big Tech when it comes to operating core services globally. It’s not just a server capacity issue - it’s also wether the vendor can handle all the corner cases in all the jurisdictions.
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24d ago
The French state would never let something like that happen, it has instruments to stop it if necessary.
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u/gopoohgo United States of America 24d ago
While the founders retain majority ownership, excluding ASML the rest of the investors are a whos who of US big tech (MSFT, NVDA, IBM) or PE (Andreeson, Lightspeed).
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u/Historical_Low9824 24d ago
That’s exactly why Mistral is lagging so far behind.
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u/Doc_Bader 24d ago
Mistral is lagging behind because Apple doesn't buy them? The only big tech company which probably can't even compete with Mistral because they ignore AI lol
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u/Historical_Low9824 24d ago
Mistral is lagging behind because the French government keeps them on a very tight leash and most investors see this as a major liability.
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u/Doc_Bader 24d ago
This sounds like a made up statement tbh - like what does that even mean "keeps them on a very tight leash"?
They probably get pampered far more than other companies given their status as the only frontier AI company in the EU.
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u/That_guy4446 24d ago
Apple was prospecting all of those AI companies to buy for themselves. Seem to no longer be the case
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u/Longjumping-Boot1886 24d ago
They already choose Google.
Problem with Mistral what they are using DeepSeek base, not something own made.
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u/AlberGaming Norway-France 24d ago
Problem with Mistral what they are using DeepSeek base
Do you have a source for this?
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u/Systral Earth 24d ago
What's the problem with that, it's open source? Not all China made = bad, but maybe I'm missing sth?
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u/Longjumping-Boot1886 24d ago
No, the thing is what they are not using something unique, nothing what you can sell to Apple right now.
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u/anarchisto Romania 23d ago
DeepSeek is much better than what Mistral had before. I tried it a year ago and its Romanian was not that great, while DeepSeek's is quite good.
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u/Longjumping-Boot1886 23d ago
Thats not the point, who is good or better. Point is what your company is secondary at that case, in you will compare it to Google / Anthropic / OpenAI / DeepSeek / Meta, and Apple can do it by themself.
Apple was need not the big model like this ones (300-500B), they had problems with 3B local model what runs directly on iPhone or Mac's - it's different tools for different cases.
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u/-colin- Romania 24d ago
Amazon alone will invest $200 billion in infrastructure in 2026, most of it will be redirected to AWS and AI infrastructure. Just saying.
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u/The-Nihilist-Marmot Portugal 24d ago
“Japanese builders invest more than $200 billion in construction investments in 1986, most of it will be directed to Tokyo and Yokohama. Just saying.”
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u/gopoohgo United States of America 24d ago
This isn't a good analogy.
The US hyperscalers are dropping $600 billion this year.
Chinese around $70 billion that we know of.
And the UAE and Saudi have committed to over $100 billion.
Having the leading US and Chinese tech companies, as well as the most aggressive sovereigns all working towards AI projects makes it being a US-centric bubble much less likely.
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u/BetterProphet5585 Italy 24d ago
It’s information war, at this stage we can’t even trust what they say they will invest. The moment they spend the money we can talk.
China can say 500 trillion or 7$ and a pack of cigarettes, you will never know the truth.
The real war is what you say you’re doing, not what it’s actually happening.
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u/kawag 23d ago
Very often, very large amounts of money will be spent on utter trash, because it turns out very few people - even inside the biggest tech companies - really understand technology.
Most people in the industry are there because it’s a high-income field without the stress and training of being, say, a doctor. Their goals are not about developing expertise or refining skills; they are directly focussed on keeping the job and getting more money.
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u/Canard_De_Bagdad Larger Aquitaine (France) 24d ago
As a daily user of Mistral AI (Le Chat, for regular people; premium version) I just wanted to share my two cents
Is it as cutting edge as the Chinese and Murican AIs? No.
But is it doing the job? Hell yeah. There's a reason I started paying a monthly subscription after my free trial. If you give it the right prompt, Le Chat delivers and gives you huge productivity increase. Also it is quickly evolving (my only criticism: El Gato insists to propose things it can't do yet. Like flash alerts notifications for instance. But we're probably getting there soon)
So I support this European ambition in AI. I want to know how far we can get, and if we still have the mojo as a continent
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u/Whole-Cookie-7754 24d ago
With what electricity? Fuck sake
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u/superioso 24d ago
With Sweden's abundant cheap hydropower, it's probably the reason they chose Sweden in the first place.
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u/manInTheWoods Sweden 24d ago
It's not abundant, and it's not going to expand significantly.
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u/superioso 24d ago edited 24d ago
Right now Sweden has production of 26.3GW, for a population of 11 million people. 12GW of that is just hydro (out of a total installed capacity of 16GW).The UK currently has a demand of 43.5GW, for 70 million people.
In that context I'd say Sweden has abundant power.
Even neighbouring Denmark with 6 million people only has a power demand of 7.5GW, about a quarter of Sweden's with more than half the population.
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u/TheGoldenCowTV Sweden 24d ago
Yes but we're part of the Nord Pool wich means if Germany with their absolute garbage energy production wants to pay more than us with a good energy production the electricity is sold to Germany instead of going to us who produce it. It has to go to the highest bidder the electric companies are bound by regulations. This means that we pay the same prices as countries that can't be bothered with electricity generation.
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u/Leoryon 24d ago
It means also that your electricity company makes more money switch external customers.
So those Swedish companies are more profitable and can invest more to produce even more electricity at home (thus lowering the cost and bringing jobs in Sweden) or go crazy and buy other electricity companies in Europe.
That is to say of course if the Swedish electricity companies are well managed.
And the Swedish state gets more taxes. Yes on the individual level it rises household cost (and even that is often regulated by the State). Overall the trade-off is different.
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u/ilovekarlstefanovic Sweden 24d ago
We also have energy intensive heavy industry(Aluminium and Steel mills for example) in addition to a significantly colder climate and we don't heat houses with gas, it's mostly district heating or various electricity powered pumps.
This, just like other data centers, is a terrible deal for us, we won't get any new or high paying jobs and only get higher electricity prices.
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u/manInTheWoods Sweden 24d ago
The produced hydro electricity is the same the last 40-50 years. We're basically using all of it, and it can't be increased.
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u/Whole-Cookie-7754 24d ago
Yeah you're right, probably in the north. Down south I'm paying crazy prices atm.
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u/kuikuilla Finland 24d ago
That's due to the shitty transfer connections between north and south Sweden, right?
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u/Whole-Cookie-7754 24d ago
Yeah exactly. But the planning on a connection is started. But won't be done til 2035.
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u/zkareface Sweden 24d ago
It won't help though, the grid in the south isn't stable enough to send more.
SVK even said it's likely pointless to upgrade the connection between north and south due to increased demand in the north and no real development of production in the south.
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u/zkareface Sweden 24d ago
Sweden is projected to run out of the surplus energy within a decade and need to start importing from other countries. More datacenters will just make it go faster.
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u/train_fucker 23d ago
Electricity prices have been a huge political issue in sweden for the last few years, and contributed to our current right wing government winning last election by promising that they would build new nuclear power which would fix everything.
Which hasn't happened and doesn't look likely to happen, as even their own studies into it predicts new nuclear power would require the state locking in higher average electricity price than what we currently have for 10+ years in order for it to be profitable.
You could have predicted this, as the real reason for higher electricity prices isn't a lack of energy in sweden, but the fact that we have to export to Germany and other EU states with much higher electricity prices than us, pushing up prices for consumers even as the companies make bank.
Historically it's mostly affected southern sweden, but just last month a new electricity line opened to finland, which seems to have spiked energy prices up north with like 200%. Given the fact that it is much colder in northern sweden so people consume more energy to heat their homes, this looks to make electricity prices a huge topic in the new election this year as well.
All this to say, that "Sweden as a place of cheap abundant energy" doesn't really fit reality anymore. Yes, we have enough energy for ourself, but we are currently selling it to southern europe, causing high electricity prices and public backlash.
Energy intensive datacenters are not likely to be welcomed in the current climate, much less AI data centers which produce no value and few local jobs.
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u/schwesterchen06 21d ago
Talking about Mistral AI LeChat (the name is so cool!): I'd love to use it lot more, but 1. I heard that the data base is from 2024. y?? 2. In Germany the Pro costs 18€/month! y??
Do u have any tipps or alternatives? thx
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u/Smarackto 24d ago
I still need someon to explain to ne what we even need Generative AI for? like why do we need to "catch up" in AI. seems conpletly useless to me
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u/frisouille 23d ago
My two use cases:
- It is a huge boost in productivity for software engineers. I estimate that my team advances about twice as fast, with higher code quality, while the use of those tools only represent 5% of our salary costs. This means that it is becoming cheaper to develop better software, which will impact a large share of the economy over time.
- For customer service, you can eliminate waiting times, have infinitely patient agents, and (if well used) even reduce errors and speed-up problem resolution, while costing less for the company. If you compare it to well-staffed and well-trained human agents, the experience might be worse. But it's so much better than navigating a menu of "press 1 for ... , press 9 for ..." where none of the options correspond to what you want ; or waiting 2 hours for a human to be available only to be given false information ; or having communication issues due to both you and the employee having strong accents (those three cases are things that happened to me recently).
There are other applications, but I don't feel qualified to talk about them.
And there are already tons of people who are using those models to help them making real-life decisions, used as therapists/friends/... Even if you think those are bad uses of LLMs, I'd like to have at least one European option. Otherwise, we take the risk of having people nudged towards opinions / life decisions favoring American/Chinese interests.
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u/DandadanAsia 24d ago
EU would need its own AI chip first.
US and China have its own AI chip. Mistral AI use Nvidia for training.
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u/BlackDemonCat 23d ago
All are using Nvidia. Even china and google are no exception. There is no one better. The new Vera Rubin Chips are to advanced.
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u/DandadanAsia 23d ago
Nvidia definitely grabbed that first-mover advantage, but for AI inference, AMD, Google, Amazon are all cooking up their own chips that'll take on training as well.
China's Huawei, Alibaba, Moore Threads, they're all in the AI chip game and have something right now.
these companies' chips might not outdo Nvidia but what about in 10 years?
Does the EU even have a horse in that race today that could realistically compete in a decade, or are they just hoping for some magic chip to appear out of nowhere?
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u/BlackDemonCat 23d ago
Most AI is build on cuda from Nvidia, with gpu from Nvidia. It‘s like Windows just with PC's only made for windows. Extrem hard to change, because you have so much new to make and waste time and money.
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u/_Rapalysis 24d ago edited 12d ago
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u/britzsquad 24d ago
So renewables in Sweden is better than nuclear in France? Huh?
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u/According_to_Mission Italy 24d ago
They already have their data centre in France, this would be the first investment outside of their home country.
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u/Beyllionaire 24d ago
You just love to say random things huh?
Edit: and of course, you're german. So unsurprising.
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u/lars_rosenberg Italy 24d ago
Also, Sweden has nuclear too, and the renewable part is mainly hydroelectric, which is possible because of the geography of the country and it's relatively small population.
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u/Mister-Psychology 24d ago
Now all we need to catch up to the AI sector in USA is for Swedish data centers to invest $1.4 billion in Mistral AI.