US – AI firm Cohere has raised $500m in funding and had added to its leadership team the former head of Meta’s fundamental AI research Joelle Pineau as chief AI officer and former Uber executive Francois Chadwick as chief financial officer.
The latest funding round values Cohere at $6.8bn, with the round led by Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital, with additional participation from existing investors including AMD Ventures, Nvidia, PSP Investments and Salesforce Ventures, as well as new investors, including Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan.
The new funding will seek to expand the company’s work with businesses and governments on agentic AI tools.
As chief AI officer, Pineau will lead Cohere’s research and product development, while Chadwick will oversee finance and business operations.
Pineau will be based in Cohere’s Montreal office and is currently a professor at the School of Computer Science at McGill University and a member of Mila, the Québec Artificial Intelligence Institute.
She was previously Meta’s vice-president of AI research, leading its Fundamental AI Research team.
Chadwick will be based in Cohere’s San Francisco office and was previously acting chief financial officer at Uber, and recently rejoined KPMG to help advise high-growth technology companies, after serving as chief financial officer at Shield AI.
Patrick Pichette, partner at Inovia Capital, will be joining Cohere’s board of directors following the completion of the latest funding round.
Aidan Gomez, co-founder and chief executive at Cohere, said he was “excited to enter this new phase of expansion alongside our partners” and added that the two new leadership additions would bring “experience, talent and insight” to support the company’s growth.