Canadian artificial intelligence darling Cohere Inc. will open its second Canadian office in Montreal in the latest sign of the rapid scale-up.
“Canada has been at the centre of AI breakthroughs over the past decades, with Montreal’s research leadership playing a pivotal role,” chief executive and co-founder Aidan Gomez said in a statement Thursday. “This represents an excellent opportunity for Cohere to grow our Canadian talent base and strengthen our relationships with the Montreal, Quebec and Canadian governments, and businesses throughout the region.”
Cohere’s Montreal office will employ seven staff, but the company aims to triple that number within a year. Cohere, which builds AI models for other businesses, was recently valued at more than US$5.5 billion and employs 400 workers globally, with the bulk of its staff in Canada. It has offices in Toronto, San Francisco, New York and London, England.
The company has long-standing ties with Montreal: in 2022, Cohere inked a research partnership with Mila, one of Canada’s three national AI institutes, and the organization’s network of over 1,300 researchers, startups, professors and students, to develop new use cases for its platform.
Cohere also has two Quebec-based investors: Inovia Capital, Inc., which led its US$270 million Series C round in 2023, and the Public Sector Investment Board, or PSP Investments, a crown corporation and pension fund manager.
As Canada continues its trade talks with the United States, Cohere’s co-founders have been outspoken about the company’s Canadian identity and have encouraged Canadian startups and founders to remain in the country and to hire domestically. Cohere is one of Canada’s biggest startups and among world’s most valuable private AI firms.
“We need to take an active nationalistic stance to build for Canada,” Gomez said last month at a Toronto Tech Week event.
At the same time, Cohere has quickly built up its business by serving customers in the U.S. The company has scored contracts with major U.S. tech firms such as Oracle Corp. and Dell Technologies Inc.
Last month, Cohere announced a partnership with Virginia-based software firm Second Front Systems to provide AI solutions for the government in areas such as national security.
Cohere will also be the biggest buyer of AI computing power from New Jersey-based cloud computing firm CoreWeave Inc., which is set to open a new $725 million data centre in Canada this year. Cohere will receive $240 million in federal funding for the deal under Ottawa’s $2 billion sovereign AI strategy.