Mistral bags $24 billion valuation as Samsung leads funding for Europe's AI champion https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/08/mistral-ai-funding-valuation-samsung.html?taid=6a9f982c4fb59000011c03d4&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_content=main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
70·B+Long
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news9/8news
Mistral bags $24 billion valuation as Samsung leads funding for Europe's AI champion
75·ALong
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news9/8news
Mistral bags $24 billion valuation as Samsung leads funding for Europe's AI champion
75·ALong
n
news9/7news
How does this turn into a PvE cycle?
To be clear, I don't actually think we're really there. I don't believe retail is fully here like they were back in 2021/2024 and I think that it's still mostly the same hot ball of money moving around. There are signs that some normies are coming onboard w/ social apps and some of these onchain ceilings, but I don't think we've really seen insane mania yet. It feels a bit like the early stages of a bull market....like October 2020 or November 2020 or something around there.
I actually don't think we'll see insane mania like we did back in 2021 or 17 (I hope I'm wrong there). A cycle equal to 2024 would be great to see but I do think that onchain won't be as insane as we saw back then (again, I hope I'm wrong).
With that said, what would actually change this? What would turn us to actual PvE (player vs. environment), where normies are coming in huge and buying our bags? (I think any combination of the below can happen fwiw)
IMO:
1) BTC cracks ATH with strength and is on a moon mission to 200k+. This one is obvious and doesn't need much explanation. Maybe this cycle is different where we don't actually need bitcoin to do huge numbers since retail flow has mostly always been about altcoins and the market is just structurally different as time has gone by. But even still, this is the easiest answer and it's been the solution for every past bull market. BTC bottoms and extra new money flows in.
2) AI x Crypto is real. That money flows into crypto from a narrative perspective and we get a lot of flow from wall street and AI investors. We saw glimpses of this in 2024, where the AI agent wave with GOAT and ai16z brought about a lot of tech junkies who were experimenting onchain. Ofc all of this was larp but it brought in real outside money. AI has been the story for all of 2025/26 in stocks and those have had insane moves - if even a fraction of that $ comes over, we will be partying.
3) Robinhood is real and we actually get tons of retail flow. This is the one that makes the most sense to me personally and the relationship is clear to me. There are dozens of posts written about this already but the stock x meme combo is really intriguing and I wouldn't be surprised to see the next wave of interesting DeFi tokens spawn from this chain / cycle. We haven't had true innovation in that area since 2020 IMO, let's see if that changes.
4) Something new gets built that brings about huge retail investors. In the past, this was sold as 'cutting edge tech' and being on the frontier. These days, I think that most of the tech happens onchain (investable tech that is) and everything else (perps, privacy, prediction markets, stables) are bigger infrastructure projects that will mostly take over the past ones (big L1s, AAVE forks, etc). I actually don't have the answer for this one because I don't see it yet but there probably will be something. In 2024 it was more pumpfun and all of the onchain madness, in 2021 we had a variety of things (economic stimulus, gaming, new L1s, etc). Innovation has largely diminished with each cycle IMO (which makes sense because anything new or exciting was thought of in previous cycles). But there's probably going to be something.
If we do get PvE, where does that $ flow? IMO onchain. Nobody is really interested in buying these huge fdv infrastructure tech projects right now. Maybe that changes and maybe we see an insane bid for Monad or something along those lines...but I don't personally see it. People are in crypto to get rich and I think everyone knows the gig at this point and they aren't interested in buying this high fdv dogshit anymore. Unless something materially changes with these token structures, I'm mega bearish on all of those.
Should be a fun cycle regardless. Still think we're in the early stages