Mistral acquires Pimento in third deal of the year

Mistral has acquired Pimento, a French startup specializing in generative artificial intelligence for advertising. This transaction marks the third acquisition completed by the company during the current year. The deal was initially reported by the platform L’Informé on Monday, and Mistral subsequently confirmed the acquisition to the French news agency, stating that the value of the transaction reached several million euros.

Estimates regarding the specific value of the acquisition have varied. L’Informé estimated the amount at approximately 3.8 million euros. In contrast, Sifted reported that the deal reached 12.7 million euros in cash and equity, based on documents it reviewed. Sifted confirmed that its figure includes an equity stake, while L’Informé did not clarify whether its estimate included such a component. Mistral has not confirmed either estimate and has not released official figures.

The acquisition focuses primarily on the Pimento team. Mistral stated that Pimento employees will join its engineering and product teams to work on Vibe, the conversational assistant previously known as Le Chat. Florent Facq, a co-founder of Pimento, stated via LinkedIn that the team’s focus will shift toward improving the user experience of Vibe. An informed source told L’Informé that Mistral’s interest lies primarily in the developer team’s expertise rather than the client base. Pimento’s client roster includes more than 180 brands. The company provides platforms to convert visual identities and marketing campaigns into designs, advertising materials, and short films suitable for social networks.

Pimento was founded in October 2022, with its initial concept being a digital tool for designing moodboards for creative teams. In December 2023, the company secured 3 million euros in seed funding led by Partech and Cygni Capital, with participation from angel investors including the co-founder of Hugging Face and the founding team of Dust. This acquisition follows a significant funding round announced by Mistral on September 8, a Series D investment of 3 billion euros that valued the company at over 21 billion euros post-investment. Samsung Electronics led the round, with participation from EQT and PSG Equity funds. This deal adds to Mistral’s growing list of acquisitions, which includes Koyeb, a serverless cloud computing platform acquired in February, and the team of Emmi AI, an Austrian company specializing in physics simulation models for industrial engineering, acquired in May. Pimento is the first company in this series of deals to offer a product targeting marketers and the advertising industry.