Enterprise AI platforms
Cohere
Toronto-based enterprise large language model company, built by former Google Brain and DeepMind researchers.
- Founded
- 2019
- Based in
- Toronto, Canada
- Stage
- Growth
- Business model
- API / developer platform, Enterprise contracts
- Also in
- Foundation models
- Record
- Needs reviewChecked 24 September 2026
What Cohere does
Cohere was founded in Toronto in 2019 by Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang and Nick Frosst. Gomez was a co-author of "Attention Is All You Need", the 2017 paper that introduced the transformer architecture underlying essentially every large language model since, including his own company's. Cohere focuses squarely on enterprise customers rather than a consumer chatbot, selling large language models for retrieval-augmented generation, search and agentic workflows deployed inside customers' own infrastructure.
The company has positioned itself as the enterprise-security-conscious alternative to consumer-facing labs, emphasising private and on-premises deployment options for regulated industries and governments - a pitch closely aligned with Canada's own push to build sovereign AI capacity.
- Large language models
- Search & retrieval
- Developer APIs & tooling
Runs it
- Aidan GomezCo-founder & CEO
- Ivan ZhangCo-founder
- Nick FrosstCo-founder
Cohere
Growth
Funds it
- Schwarz Group
- Nvidia
- Salesforce Ventures
- PSP Investments
What it builds
Command
Enterprise-focused large language model family.
North
Cohere's enterprise AI agent and search platform.
Who runs it
Founders
Aidan Gomez
Co-founder & CEO
Co-author of the 2017 "Attention Is All You Need" transformer paper.
Ivan Zhang
Co-founder
Nick Frosst
Co-founder
Previously at Google Brain.
Leadership
Aidan Gomez
Chief Executive Officer
Who funds it
- Total raised
- Approximately $1.64 billion across multiple rounds
- Valuation, as of Sep 2026
- Reported at $7 billion following the September 2025 round; reported in talks for $20 billion in 2026
Rounds on record
Series E (extended)
Approximately $600 million (€500 million), led by Schwarz Group
sacra.com/c/cohere (opens in a new tab)
Investors
- Schwarz Group
- Nvidia
- Salesforce Ventures
- PSP Investments
What it has done
Schwarz Group leads structured financing
Germany's Schwarz Group committed approximately $600 million in structured financing as lead investor in Cohere's extended Series E round.
sacra.com/c/cohere (opens in a new tab)
Related files
- Foundation modelsUnited States
OpenAI
The maker of ChatGPT and the GPT model family, and the company most responsible for the current wave of consumer generative AI.
- Foundation modelsUnited States
Anthropic
AI safety-focused lab behind the Claude model family, founded by former OpenAI researchers.
- Foundation modelsUnited Kingdom
Google DeepMind
Alphabet's unified AI research and product lab, formed from the 2023 merger of DeepMind and Google Brain, and the maker of the Gemini model family.
- Foundation modelsUnited States
Meta Superintelligence Labs
Meta's consolidated AI division, formed in mid-2025 to unify its foundation-model, research and product AI work under one organization.