Cohere Inc. is a Canadian multinational technology company focused on artificial intelligence. Cohere specializes in large language models and AI products for regulated industries, particularly finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and energy fields, as well as the public sector. Founded in 2019, the company is headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Montreal, New York City, San Francisco, London, Paris, and Seoul. In April 2026, Cohere agreed to acquire German AI firm Aleph Alpha, a move aimed at strengthening its position in the global AI market.
Cohere's technology is built on the Transformer (architecture) architecture, a Machine learning framework introduced in 2017 by researchers at Google Brain. The company develops Large language models that process text from internal data or public sources to generate responses, powering applications such as chatbots, search engines, and summarization tools. Cohere positions itself as an alternative to OpenAI and other AI providers, emphasizing cloud-agnostic deployment and a focus on enterprise needs.
History
Cohere was founded in 2019 by Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, and Nick Frosst, all of whom attended the University of Toronto. Gomez, a co-author of the 2017 transformer paper "Attention Is All You Need," serves as CEO. Nick Frosst, also a former Google Brain researcher, and Ivan Zhang, who collaborated with Gomez at FOR.ai, co-founded the company. In December 2022, Martin Kon, former CFO of YouTube, became president and COO.
In November 2021, Google Cloud announced it would power Cohere's platform using its infrastructure, including TPUs for model development. In June 2022, Cohere launched Cohere Labs (initially called Cohere For AI), a nonprofit research lab and community for open-source machine learning research. Sara Hooker, a former Google Brain scientist, led the lab until her departure in September 2025; Marzieh Fadaee subsequently took over leadership.
In December 2022, Cohere released a multilingual model supporting over 100 languages, enabling semantic search beyond English. On September 12, 2023, Cohere signed a voluntary White House commitment on AI risk testing and reporting, and on September 27, 2023, it signed Canada's voluntary code of conduct for responsible AI development.
Cohere opened a New York City office in 2024, followed by expansions to Montreal, Paris, and Seoul in 2025. In May 2025, it acquired Ottogrid, a Vancouver-based enterprise market research automation platform. In June 2025, Cohere partnered with the governments of Canada and the United Kingdom to expand AI use in the public sector. In August 2025, Joelle Pineau joined as Chief AI Officer, and Francois Chadwick, a former Uber executive, became the first Chief Financial Officer.
On April 10, 2026, Cohere and German AI firm Aleph Alpha announced merger talks, with Berlin's support. On April 24, 2026, they confirmed a deal in which Cohere would acquire Aleph Alpha. While terms were not public, an anonymous source told the New York Times the combined companies would be worth $20 billion. The deal included $600 million in investment from Schwarz Gruppe, already a major Aleph Alpha investor, and aimed to challenge US and Chinese AI dominance.
Products
Cohere builds Generative AI technology for businesses, offering tools for chatbots, search engines, copywriting, and summarization. Its platform is available as a managed API and through services like Amazon SageMaker and Google's Vertex AI. Cohere is cloud agnostic, not tied to a single cloud provider. Its models are integrated into Oracle products, and its chat capabilities are embedded in Salesforce products.
In March 2025, Cohere Labs introduced Aya Vision, an AI model that describes images, translates text, and summarizes information. Aya Vision is free for research but not permitted for commercial use.
Partnerships
On June 13, 2023, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure announced a partnership with Cohere to provide generative AI services, integrating Cohere's technology into Oracle Fusion Cloud, NetSuite, and industry-specific applications. On July 18, 2023, McKinsey announced a collaboration to help organizations integrate generative AI. In 2023, Cohere also partnered with LivePerson to offer customized large language models.
In 2024, Cohere partnered with Fujitsu to co-develop Takane, a Japanese LLM. In January 2025, with RBC, Cohere launched North for Banking, a secure generative AI platform for financial services. A partnership with LG developed a Korean LLM and customized North for Korean companies.
In May 2025, Cohere partnered with SAP to integrate its models into SAP's Business Suite and make them available through SAP AI Core. In November 2025, North was included in SAP's European AI Cloud launch. Cohere also collaborated with Dell Technologies, making Dell the first infrastructure provider for North, its secure AI workspace. In healthcare, Cohere partnered with Ensemble Health Partners to deploy agentic AI for administrative workflows.
In July 2025, Cohere partnered with Bell Canada to provide AI services to government and enterprise customers, deploying technology on Bell's data center infrastructure. In December 2025, Thales Group partnered with Cohere for naval and maritime defense AI. Hanwha Ocean contracted with Cohere in January 2026 for AI in ship design and procurement. In March 2026, Saab AB announced a partnership using Cohere's AI for the GlobalEye surveillance aircraft.
Technology and Research
Cohere's models are based on the Transformer (architecture) architecture, which uses Multi-Head Attention mechanisms to process sequential data. The company employs techniques such as Residual Network (ResNet)s and Layer Normalization to improve training stability. Cohere's research lab, Cohere Labs, contributes to open-source machine learning, focusing on multilingual models and efficient training methods.
Market Position
Cohere operates in the competitive Large language model market, alongside companies like Anthropic and Google DeepMind. Its focus on regulated industries and cloud-agnostic deployment differentiates it from rivals. The acquisition of Aleph Alpha in 2026 was seen as a strategic move to consolidate European AI capabilities and compete with US-based firms.
Future Outlook
As of April 2026, Cohere continues to expand its partnerships and product offerings. The company's emphasis on enterprise AI and public sector applications positions it for growth, though it faces challenges in attracting investment compared to US competitors. The Aleph Alpha acquisition is expected to enhance Cohere's technological capabilities and market reach.