Cohere, a Canadian artificial intelligence start-up, is reportedly seeking to raise more than $500m (C$685m) in a new funding round.
This move aims to strengthen its position in the competitive AI landscape, alongside industry leaders such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
Cohere is targeting a valuation of more than $5.5bn, reported Financial Times, citing sources familiar with the discussions.
According to the media report, the valuation could potentially reach between $6bn and $6.5bn, although discussions remain in the early stages.
This anticipated funding would position Cohere among the most valuable start-ups in the AI sector, despite trailing behind US competitors that have seen significant valuation increases.
In April 2025, OpenAI achieved a $300bn valuation, up from $157bn in 2024, while Anthropic’s funding round in March increased its valuation to $61.5bn.
Cohere was founded by former Google researchers, including CEO Aidan Gomez, a co-author of the influential “Attention Is All You Need” paper, which introduced the transformer AI architecture.
Unlike its competitors, Cohere has not launched a consumer-facing app, instead it is focusing on enterprise and privacy-centric solutions.
The company has developed “open” models like the Aya multilingual models, accessible for developers to build upon, entering a market with competitors such as Meta and start-ups Mistral and DeepSeek.
Cohere’s founders, including Gomez, Nick Frosst, and Ivan Zhang, are also pursuing contracts with tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, which offer their own AI models to enterprises.
Cohere has doubled its annual recurring revenue in the past four months, surpassing $100m last month.
“A lot of the consumer adoption happened right away,” said a source close to Cohere.
“Enterprise tends to be slower in adoption but stickier in terms of users. Companies aren’t known to adopt tech early.”
The development of advanced AI models demands significant financial investment for training and computing power. Nearly three years after OpenAI’s ChatGPT sparked the AI boom, investors are eager to see returns on their investments in AI model creators.
Cohere has also launched North, a platform enabling businesses to build AI agents for office tasks, although it is currently available to a limited number of customers.
In December 2024, it was reported that Cohere plans to build an ‘multibillion-dollar’ AI data centre in Canada with financial support from the Canadian government.
“Cohere seeks $500m funding to advance AI development” was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand.