Cohere, a Canadian AI startup and competitor to OpenAI, has announced the successful completion of a $500 million Series D funding round. This new influx of capital will be used to expand Cohere’s team and advance its enterprise-grade AI technology.
Founded in 2019, Cohere specializes in generative AI solutions tailored for enterprise clients. The latest funding round was supported by major investors including Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce Ventures, Cisco, AMD Ventures, and Canadian pension investment manager PSP Investments. Fujitsu also participated in the round, revealing a "significant investment" alongside a joint development deal to create large language models specifically for Japanese businesses.
This funding boost raises Cohere’s valuation to $5.5 billion and brings its total capital raised to nearly $970 million. The startup expressed enthusiasm about the opportunity to scale its operations and enhance its technology, aiming to deliver substantial productivity and efficiency improvements for businesses globally. "We’re excited to announce our series D funding round that will help us expand our team and take our frontier, enterprise-grade AI technology to the next level," the company stated on LinkedIn.
Unlike OpenAI, which caters to a broad audience including general users and businesses, Cohere focuses exclusively on enterprise applications, particularly in developing large language models for AI chatbots and other business solutions. Its platform is already utilized by major clients such as Spotify, Glean, and Oracle.
Cohere was founded by former Google scientists Aidan Gomez and Nick Frosst, alongside Ivan Zhang. Gomez co-authored the influential paper on Transformers, which has been pivotal in the development of large language models. Frosst previously worked at Google Brain with Turing Award winner Geoffrey Hinton.
Despite the positive momentum from the funding round, Cohere recently laid off 5% of its 400-person workforce. CEO Aidan Gomez described the layoffs as a "necessary step" to ensure the company remains competitive and maintains its industry leadership. Nevertheless, the startup plans to continue hiring in key areas such as customer operations, sales, marketing, and product design.
Cohere, with operations split between Toronto and San Francisco, has been actively engaging with investors to secure the funds needed to further its mission of advancing business-focused AI solutions.
