Canadian AI Startup Cohere Valued at $5.5 Billion

The Canadian startup Cohere has raised $500 million, achieving a valuation of $5.5 billion, thus becoming one of the most valuable AI companies globally, according to Bloomberg.

The Series D round was led by pension fund manager PSP Investments, with participation from Cisco Systems, Fujitsu, AMD Ventures, and EDC. Cohere’s valuation more than doubled after securing $270 million approximately a year ago.

We’re excited to announce our Series D financing to accelerate growth, expand our team, & develop our next class of frontier, enterprise-grade, data privacy-focused AI technology.

We’re bringing highly scalable and secure AI solutions to global enterprises wherever their data is… pic.twitter.com/0qJS9eFneU

— cohere (@cohere) July 22, 2024

“We are pleased to announce our Series D funding to accelerate growth, expand our team, and develop the next generation of advanced enterprise-grade AI technologies focused on data privacy,” stated Cohere on X.

Founded in 2019, the firm specializes in creating large language models—software trained on vast amounts of internet data. The company’s products are aimed at the corporate sector. Cohere’s software is used by hundreds of clients like Notion Labs and Oracle for website content creation, user interaction, and integrating generative AI into their solutions.

Unlike competitors such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, Cohere does not aim to create artificial general intelligence (AGI). Instead, the startup focuses on developing software that helps companies operate more efficiently.

“We are not chasing AGI. We are trying to create models that can be effectively deployed in enterprises to solve real problems,” noted company co-founder Nick Frosst.

In April, Cohere released its flagship AI model Command R+, which is “designed to handle enterprise-level workloads.” 

Back in 2022, media reports surfaced about Google’s interest in investing in Cohere.