By Supantha Mukherjee and Leo Marchandon

STOCKHOLM, March 30 - Europe's leading AI provider

Mistral has raised $830 million in new debt to buy 13,800 Nvidia ( NVDA )

chips for a major data centre near Paris, the firm told

Reuters, as Europe races to scale AI infrastructure to compete

with the U.S. and China.

The deal, set to be announced on Monday, marks Mistral's

first debt raising and underscores growing investor confidence

in European AI firms as they seek to challenge the dominance of

U.S. tech giants like Microsoft ( MSFT ), Google and

Amazon ( AMZN ) in cloud computing and AI services.

Mistral's debt raising was financed by a consortium of seven

banks, including BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole CIB

, HSBC ( HSBC ) and MUFG, it said. The data

center in Bruyeres-le-Chatel is expected to become operational

in the second quarter of 2026.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukerjee in Stockholm and Leo Marchandon

in Gdansk)