Artificial intelligence startup Cohere Inc. is now one of the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence companies, and one of the largest startups in Canada — but unlike some of its Silicon Valley competitors, it’s not particularly flashy. In a new funding round, Cohere was valued at $5.5 billion, vaulting it to the upper echelons of global startups. It landed there without a consumer app that writes poems, draws pictures or helps with homework. Instead, Toronto-based Cohere makes large language models — software trained on massive swaths of the internet to analyze and generate text — and customizes them for businesses. Its software has attracted hundreds of customers such as Notion Labs Inc. and Oracle Inc. (also an investor), which use the startup’s technology to do things like help write website copy, communicate with users and add generative AI to their own products. Cohere has also attracted investors. The company has raised $500 million in a Series D funding, it plans to announce on Monday. The round was led by Canadian pension investment manager PSP Investments, alongside a syndicate of additional new backers including investors at Cisco Systems Inc., Japan’s Fujitsu, chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s AMD Ventures and Canada’s export credit agency EDC. The fresh financing more than doubles the startup’s valuation from last year, when Cohere raised $270 million in a round led by Montreal-based Inovia Capital, and brings its total cash haul to $970 million. The round has also coincided with an increasingly competitive landscape for venture funding, even in the closely watched world of AI. Reuters previously reported some details of the deal.

Full report : Canadian AI Startup Cohere Which Does Not Have a Single Viral AI Chatbot Valued at $5.5 Billion in New Funding Round.