Cohere Confirms $500M Raise at $6.8B Valuation, Hires New AI Chief
Generative AI startup Cohere has confirmed a substantial funding round, securing $500 million at a post-money valuation of $6.8 billion. This announcement, made on Thursday, corroborates earlier reports from June that the company was on track to raise more than $500 million at a valuation exceeding $5.5 billion. The latest infusion of capital was co-led by Inovia Capital and Radical Ventures, with notable participation from strategic investors including AMD Ventures, Nvidia, PSP Investments, and Salesforce Ventures, among others.
Headquartered in Toronto and founded by former Google researchers in 2019, Cohere has carved a distinct niche in the burgeoning artificial intelligence landscape. Unlike many competitors that focus on consumer-facing applications, Cohere specializes in developing bespoke AI models designed for enterprise clients. These models power critical business functions such as generating website copy and enhancing customer service through advanced chatbots for a roster of prominent companies including Dell, Notion, and Oracle. A key differentiator for Cohere’s platform is its cloud-agnostic architecture, allowing for flexible deployment across public clouds, virtual private clouds, customer-owned infrastructure, or on-site systems.
With this latest raise, Cohere’s total funding since its inception now stands at approximately $1.5 billion, according to Crunchbase data. The company’s previous significant funding event was a $500 million Series D round in July 2024. Other notable early and ongoing investors include Alumni Ventures, Index Ventures, Radical Ventures, and SentinelOne.
Accompanying the funding news, Cohere also announced key strategic hires to bolster its leadership team. Joelle Pineau, formerly the Vice President of AI research at Meta, has been appointed as Cohere’s Chief AI Officer. Additionally, Francois Chadwick, who previously served as CFO of Shield AI, joins the company as its new Chief Financial Officer. These appointments signal Cohere’s commitment to scaling its technological advancements and financial operations.
Over the past year, Cohere has significantly expanded its product offerings, rolling out a suite of enterprise-grade AI solutions. These include advanced generative and retrieval models, alongside its flagship “security-first” agentic AI platform, North. The company’s deep roots in foundational AI research are underscored by its co-founder, Aidan Gomez, who co-authored Google’s seminal paper “Attention is All You Need.” This technical work is widely recognized for laying the groundwork for many of today’s most sophisticated generative AI models.
Cohere’s financial performance further highlights its rapid ascent. A source familiar with the company’s operations, who requested anonymity, revealed that Cohere doubled its annual recurring revenue (ARR) earlier this year, surpassing the $100 million mark in May. The company operates in a highly competitive arena, squaring off not only against fellow AI innovators like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic but also against tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon, all of whom are actively marketing AI models to enterprise clients.
The substantial investment in Cohere reflects a broader trend of sustained momentum in AI funding. Crunchbase data indicates that nearly half of all U.S. venture funding over the past year has been directed towards AI-related enterprises, a dominance mirrored globally. The first quarter of 2025 marked an unprecedented period for AI investment, with $59.6 billion flowing into the sector worldwide, representing a staggering 53% of all global venture funding—making it the strongest quarter for AI funding ever recorded.
Jordan Jacobs, co-founder and managing partner of Radical Ventures, an early investor in Cohere, expressed confidence in the company’s trajectory. “We have been proud investors and partners with Cohere and its founders since day one, with a vision to deliver leading AI for business,” Jacobs stated. “Cohere is fulfilling that promise by building privacy-first, cloud-agnostic models and agentic AI applications that are driving extraordinary productivity gains and ROI to blue-chip enterprises, businesses, and governments worldwide.” This latest funding round positions Cohere to further solidify its standing as a pivotal player in the enterprise AI market, driving innovation and adoption across diverse industries.