Cohere just raised an oversubscribed $500 million funding round. Its valuation jumped to $6.8 billion, up from $5.5 billion a year ago after the last $500 million raise.
The Toronto-based AI startup was an early large language model player, co-founded by Aidan Gomez, co-author of the landmark “Attention Is All You Need” paper. Despite being quieter lately compared to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, Cohere focuses strictly on secure enterprise AI models, not consumer products.
Big names are onboard. Partners include Oracle, Dell, Bell, Fujitsu, LG’s CNS, SAP, RBC, and a fresh investor, Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan. Cohere’s press release slammed consumer models for lacking security in enterprise AI. 
Recently, Cohere poached Meta’s research head Joelle Pineau as chief AI officer and added CFO Francois Chadwick from KPMG and Shield AI.
The round was led by Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital. Existing investors AMD Ventures, Nvidia, and Salesforce Ventures also chipped in. Oracle’s ongoing involvement remains unclear.
Oracle backed Cohere in 2023 but now leans heavily on OpenAI, especially with its Stargate data center project.
Cohere “represents a security-first category of enterprise AI that is simply not being met by repurposed consumer models.”
