Cohere, a Canadian artificial intelligence start-up that is to acquire Germay’s Aleph Alpha, has sought to distinguish itself from massive rivals like the U.S. firms Anthropic and OpenAI.
Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst has said that includes remaining focused on “real-world problems,” developing technologies that help businesses and the public sector work more efficiently — in contrast to products used by individuals, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Here are some facts about the company.
Origins
Cohere was founded in Toronto in 2019 by Aiden Gomez, Ivan Zhang and Frosst, who had previously worked with Geoffrey Hinton, the 2024 physics Nobel Prize winner widely referred to as “the Godfather of AI.”
The company says it raised nearly $1 billion between 2021 and 2024, allowing it to expand globally and establish a footprint in the United States, Europe and Asia.
A key step came last year when Cohere launched a product it calls North, which it says helps automate routine tasks and speed up workflow while running privately, or even air-gapped — meaning not connected to the internet.
Strategy
In a February interview with the Canadian tech website The Peak, Frosst described Cohere as “the only major AI provider exclusively focused on the enterprise and government market.”
Asked how its research and development was distinct from large American AI firms, he said: “We prioritize making our tech do what companies need.”
“Others are burning cash in pursuit of AGI [Artificial General Intelligence], but we’re building technology that works today.”
Frosst also distanced himself from some of the more ominous predictions about AI’s disruptive impact on the global workforce.
“If the industry gets it right, AI will be boring. In the best way. It should fade into the background, power the technology and tools we’ll use every day, and make work more enjoyable,” he said.
“This will be transformative, but nowhere near the same way doomsday headlines claim.”
Growth
Gomez, who is Cohere’s CEO, told CNBC in 2024 that the company’s initial innovations were done “with like five people.”
The company has substantially expanded, and Gomez has said a key to its success has been the ability to offer companies or public sector entities tools to work faster.
He has cited a model Cohere built to help an insurance company, which allowed it to develop a quote for coverage quicker than competitors, including by swiftly assessing risk.
“I never thought that an insurance company for natural resource projects would be adopting large language models,” he told CNBC. “But they are.”
