Samsung Electronics Co. announced Wednesday that it has entered a partnership with French artificial intelligence startup Mistral AI aimed at enhancing its semiconductor operations.

The world's largest memory chipmaker said in a press release that the partnership was announced during a summit between South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and French President Emmanuel Macron held in Paris on Tuesday local time.

Under the agreement, Samsung will integrate Mistral AI's services and solutions into its semiconductor operations to develop customized AI models for on-premise use. Keeping the models on-premise means Samsung can run them inside its own facilities without sending sensitive process and design data to external cloud services.

Mistral AI, founded in 2023 by former employees of Google's DeepMind and Meta, has developed large language models, including Mistral Large. The Paris-based startup has become one of Europe's most prominent AI firms and is frequently cited as a European counterpart to U.S. players such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

As semiconductor production processes grow increasingly advanced and complex, Samsung expects Mistral AI's platform to help improve the design and manufacturing of semiconductors. Samsung competes with SK Hynix in memory chips and with TSMC in contract chip manufacturing, and yield management is a key battleground as manufacturers push toward finer process nodes and advanced memory products such as high-bandwidth memory used in AI systems.

"Increasing complexities involved in AI chip design and manufacturing requires continuous innovation in semiconductor technologies," said Jun Young-hyun, vice chairman and head of Samsung's semiconductor division.

Samsung said it aims to use targeted AI models to accelerate development cycles, improve manufacturing precision, and stabilize yields for advanced memory chips.

Source: The Korea Times