AI startup says it will heed Prime Minister’s call to make government “more productive and efficient.”
Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Cohere has inked new partnerships with the Canadian and United Kingdom (UK) governments as it expands its offerings beyond enterprise AI into the public sector.
Cohere said it will focus on “transforming” government operations with AI and collaborating on AI research with the Canadian AI Safety Institute.
The partnerships aim to leverage Cohere’s AI tools and expertise “to enhance government services and national sovereignty,” the company said. Cohere and the two governments announced the collaborations yesterday, as Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez met with Carney and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Ottawa.
“A Canadian success story, Cohere, is expanding its business in the United Kingdom and working with our government to ensure AI is developed safely and responsibly,” Carney wrote in a post on X.
“Together we’re creating more opportunities in AI on both sides of the pond.”
Founded in 2019, Cohere is Canada’s best-funded large-language model (LLM) developer. It focuses on enterprise AI, selling its workspace platform North to clients such as the Royal Bank of Canada and Ensemble Health Partners. Last summer, Cohere closed $500 million USD in Series D financing at a $5.5-billion valuation (then $687 million CAD at a $7.6-billion valuation), bringing its total funds raised to more than $900 million USD.
According to Cohere, its partnership with the federal government will focus on “transforming” government operations with AI and collaborating on AI research with the Canadian AI Safety Institute (CAISI). CAISI is led by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), with participation from the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), as well as the broader Canadian research community through the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). Research efforts will focus on the practical risks of AI and enhancing security safeguards for AI models, the company said.
The news comes after Carney published his mandate letter to cabinet ministers, which said the government must boost productivity by “deploying AI at scale” and “focusing on results over spending.”
“Cohere will further its work to meet the Prime Minister’s call to make government more productive and efficient,” the company said in a release.
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Canada’s first Minister of AI and Digital Innovation, Evan Solomon, echoed Carney’s sentiment in his first public remarks last week. The four priorities for Solomon’s new ministry are scaling up Canada’s AI industry, driving AI adoption, ensuring that Canadians trust the technology, and ensuring AI sovereignty in Canada.
Solomon described the potential of AI tools to streamline government processes, such as reducing call wait times at the Canada Revenue Agency using agentic AI customer service software from Toronto-based AI startup Ada.
Several Canadian tech leaders, such as Koho CEO Daniel Eberhard, have called for public service reform via memos published on Build Canada, a pro-business, entrepreneurship-focused policy platform that uses AI tools to help draft its posts.
The announcement was part of a slew of new partnerships between Canada and the UK on innovation, defence, and security matters. These included a joint commitment to develop secure quantum communications, a $14.8-million joint investment into biomanufacturing, and the establishment of the Joint Canada-UK Common Good Cyber Fund, through which they are providing $5.7 million over five years to “civil society actors at high risk.”
Each government signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Cohere, outlining how the company will help with AI expertise in delivering government services, attracting talent, bolstering AI security, and conducting research.
The Canadian MOU also says Cohere will develop its commitment to build cutting-edge data centres in Canada, building on the $240-million investment Cohere received from the Canadian government through its Canada Sovereign AI Compute Strategy.
Cohere reportedly reached $100 million USD ($138 million CAD) in annualized revenue recently after more than doubling its sales since the start of 2025, and CEO Aidan Gomez recently told Bloomberg the company was “not far away” from profitability. But The Information has reported this is $350-million USD behind what Cohere told investors in 2023 it would be making annually at this point.
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BetaKit reached out to Cohere and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to find out if there was a financial commitment associated with the MOU, but did not hear back before press time.
As for its agreement with the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT), Cohere is tasked with adopting AI in government services, growing the UK’s AI talent pool, advancing AI security, and exploring opportunities to deploy AI in defence contexts. This might include “informing the development of policy positions,” according to DSIT.
Gomez is registered to lobby the federal government on behalf of Cohere, including the PMO and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), on several issues, including providing AI expertise to the CAISI team and discussing Canada’s participation in the G7 Summit and global AI leadership. Cohere was part of the Canadian delegation attending VivaTech in France last week, where its president and COO Martin Kon met with Solomon along with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Feature image courtesy Prime Minister of Canada via X.
