Artificial intelligence start-up Cohere has raised $500mn, and hired former executives from Uber and Meta, as it positions itself as a more secure alternative to rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic for business customers. The new funding round values the group, founded in 2019 by ex-Google scientists, at $6.8bn including the new cash, up from a $5.5bn valuation achieved last year. The new investment was led by Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital, along with AMD Ventures, Nvidia, PSP Investments, Salesforce Ventures, and others. Cohere also announced it has hired Joelle Pineau, a highly-regarded academic who led AI research at Meta until April this year, as its chief AI officer, and former Uber executive Francois Chadwick as chief financial officer. Cohere competes with larger US rivals including OpenAI, Google and Elon Musk’s xAI to develop cutting-edge large language models, which underpin tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.
Unlike these competitors, the Canadian group sells exclusively to businesses, training its model on their internal data and often running it on their premises rather than using external cloud computing services. Cohere is counting on this strategy giving it an edge with companies in regulated industries — such as banking, telecoms or government services — for which security and compliance are paramount.

Full report : Toronto-based Cohere raised $500 million led by Radical and Inovia at a $6.8 billion valuation, up from $5.5 billion in July 2024, and has doubled its ARR to $100 million so far in 2025.