Cohere’s push to provide secure A.I. tools for enterprises is attracting big-name investors and high-profile tech leaders. The Canadian startup announced today (Aug. 14) that it has raised $500 million in an oversubscribed funding round and hired two senior executives to help it compete with rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic.
The round, led by Radical Ventures and Ionia Capital, values Cohere at $6.8 billion, up from $5.5 billion last July. Other backers include Nvidia, AMD, Salesforce and PSP Investments.
Cohere also named Joelle Pineau as its first chief A.I. officer and Francois Chadwick as chief financial officer. Pineau previously led Meta’s Fundamental A.I. Research (FAIR) team and holds positions at McGill University and the Mila Quebec A.I. Institute. Chadwick has held senior roles at Uber, KPMG and Shield AI.
“Cohere was incredibly appealing to me because they are implementing A.I. in ways that fundamentally are changing how businesses and governments operate,” said Pineau, who left Meta earlier this year after an eight-year tenure, in a statement. “They are realizing the full potential of A.I.”
The hires come as Cohere prepares for the departure of vice president of research Sara Hooker, who announced on Aug. 11 that she will leave after three years, calling her time at the company “the adventure of lifetime.”
Founded in 2019 by three former Google researchers—including CEO Aiden Gomez, co-author of the influential 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need,”—Cohere has focused on custom large language models (LLMs) for enterprise clients rather than the mass consumer market. It now has offices in Toronto, San Francisco, London and New York.
Competing in a crowded field
Cohere’s growth, with $100 million in recurring revenue, still trails far behind its largest competitors. OpenAI’s recurring revenue sits around $13 billion, with a potential $500 billion valuation in sight. Anthropic, in talks for a $170 billion valuation, has an annual revenue rate of $4 billion.
To close the gap, Cohere is betting on its emphasis on security and privacy. The company offers private deployment options, allows customers to opt out of model training, and runs extensive threat-detection and testing systems. That approach has helped it secure partnerships with major players in finance, telecom and health care, including Bell, Fujitsu, Oracle and the Royal Bank of Canada.
Its latest product, North, is a platform for agentic A.I. designed for deployment in private environments.
“Cohere is becoming the world’s chosen partner for integrating A.I. into their critical industries,” said Gomez in a statement. “We are at a pivotal moment in accelerating the delivery of secure A.I. that empowers enterprises worldwide, and we’re excited to enter this new phase of expansion alongside our partners.”