If it was a good valuation scheme, then Nvidia giving them $100 million at a $2 billion valuation would mean that Nvidia thinks the company is worth $2 billion.

If it was a good valuation scheme, then Nvidia giving them $100 million at a $2 billion valuation would mean that Nvidia thinks the company is worth $2 billion. But if Mistral uses that money to buy GPUs that Nvidia sells with 75% profit margin, the deal is profitable for Nvidia even if they believe the company is worth only $0.5 billion (since they effectively get 75% of the investment back). And if this deal fuels the wider LLM hype and leads other companies to spend just $50 million more at Nvidia, this investment is profitable for Nvidia even if Mistral had negative value.