Pimento, the generative artificial intelligence startup for advertising creativity founded in Paris in 2022 by Chilean Tomás Yany and Frenchman Florent Facq, was acquired by Mistral AI in an operation valued at approximately US$14.6 million.
Tomás Yany, an engineer at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and former Apple, confirmed on September 22 the incorporation of the team to the French giant of foundational models. It is Mistral’s third acquisition in 2026 and the only one with a Latin American founding team.
Pimento developed a generative AI platform aimed at marketers and creative teams, which automated the generation of variants of advertising pieces while maintaining brand coherence.
In December 2023 it raised a seed round of approximately €3 million led by Partech and Cygni Capital, with the participation of angels such as Julien Chaumond, co-founder of Hugging Face, and Stanislas Polu, co-founder of Dust.
An exit that arrives before four years
The acquisition was completed before Pimento was four years old, in a context of strong consolidation in the generative AI ecosystem.
Mistral AI, which has just closed the largest round in the history of European tech, a €3 billion Series D led by Samsung Electronics, continues its strategy of integrating specialized tools on top of its foundational models.
Previous 2026 acquisitions include Koyeb (serverless infrastructure) and Emmi AI (industrial simulation), which shows a clear pattern: absorbing vertical products with specific workflows built on generative AI.
A signal for the Latin American ecosystem
Tomás Yany’s exit is relevant for the Latin American ecosystem because it demonstrates that founders from the region can build in the most competitive markets in the world and reach agreements with the most relevant actors in global AI.
The B2B model with a specific workflow for an industry, in this case advertising, turned out to be exactly the type of proposal that large infrastructure players seek to integrate to strengthen their ecosystems.
