Toronto-based AI startup Cohere is winning investors’ interest. The company announced today (September 24) that its valuation has climbed to $7 billion after a new $100 million capital injection. The new funding comes from Business Development Bank of Canada and Nexxus Capital Management. It was part of Cohere’s $500 million round in August, led by Aggressive Venture Capital and Ionia Capital, and saw Nvidia, AMD and Salesforce participation.
Founded in 2019 by former Google researchers Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang and Nick Frosst, Cohere carved a niche by focusing on serving companies and governments. It designs AI products specifically for the enterprise market and avoids pursuing consumer-first tools such as Openai’s Chatgpt.
“We believe that Cohere’s AI solutions are meeting the market’s neglected demand for technology, which really improves business and government efficiency while keeping their own data completely in their own hands,” Francois Chadwick, Cohere’s chief financial officer, said in a statement. He added that the company’s ongoing investor demand represents “a significant recognition of the momentum of enterprises deploying security and sovereign AI.”
Cohere said the new funding will help expand its global adoption in the public and private sectors. Earlier this year, the startup launched its latest model family, “Command Series A”, which includes systems for inference, machine translation and visual data. Its proxy AI platform North is designed to handle sensitive information from regulated industries and governments.
North users include AMD, which today announced plans to integrate the platform into its corporate portfolio. Under the expanded partnership, Cohere’s products will also be powered by AMD’s instinctive GPUs.
Other major clients include Fujitsu, Bell and Royal Bank of Canada. The startup has almost tripled its annual revenue this year, from $35 million in March to $100 million in May. Government demand has also exacerbated growth: Last month, Cohere signed a non-binding agreement with the Canadian federal government to integrate its technology into public service operations.
