Cohere Hires Meta's AI Head Joelle Pineau as Chief AI Officer

Canadian AI startup Cohere was once perceived by investors as a formidable challenger to industry giants like OpenAI and Anthropic in the race to develop cutting-edge AI models. Backers poured approximately $1 billion into the venture, placing their faith in CEO Aidan Gomez, who, at just 20 years old, co-authored a seminal paper on large language models during his Google internship. However, Cohere’s AI models have since struggled to keep pace with the rapidly advancing state of the art, and its business growth has not mirrored the rapid scaling seen in its direct competitors.

In a significant move to reinvigorate its AI endeavors, Cohere has now appointed Joelle Pineau, Meta’s former Vice President of AI Research, as its Chief AI Officer. Pineau previously oversaw Meta’s fundamental AI research (FAIR) lab and played a pivotal role in guiding the early development of Meta’s open-source Llama AI models alongside neural network pioneer Yann LeCun. Having departed Meta in May after nearly eight years, the Canadian AI scientist and McGill Professor will, in her newly created role, be responsible for shaping AI strategy across Cohere’s research, product, and policy teams.

This high-profile hire arrives at a critical juncture for Cohere, which is reportedly seeking to raise up to $500 million at a $6.3 billion valuation. While impressive on its own, this sum pales in comparison to the multi-billion-dollar war chests of rivals such as OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic, each boasting resources valued in the tens of billions.

Yet, unlike its competitors, which are largely focused on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems capable of matching or exceeding human performance across a broad spectrum of tasks, Cohere maintains a narrower, more pragmatic focus. The startup primarily develops AI applications designed to solve specific, practical problems for enterprises and government agencies, placing a strong emphasis on privacy and security.

Pineau herself expressed enthusiasm for Cohere’s real-world, enterprise-centric approach in a recent interview. She observed that “a lot of players out there are quite singularly focused on AGI, superintelligence, and so on,” alluding to companies like her former employer, Meta, which recently invested billions in its new Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) unit. She added that these companies “haven’t necessarily figured out what this AI is going to be used for,” pointing to OpenAI’s recent, widely perceived underwhelming launch of GPT-5 as evidence that the timeline for achieving AGI might be “a little bit longer than we thought.” Meanwhile, Pineau believes there is substantial scope for more practical AI models to drive significant productivity leaps across various industries.

A Canada native, Pineau noted her long-standing interest in Cohere since its founding in 2019, expressing excitement to contribute to a company with founders based in her home country. Beyond patriotism, she views the Cohere opportunity as a chance to move beyond pure research. At Meta’s FAIR lab, she oversaw research projects with timelines ranging from 18 months to a decade. Her new role demands a much tighter timeline, involving direct engagement with customers and products. Despite Cohere’s comparatively fewer resources than Meta, Pineau anticipates greater agility in her new position.

Cohere’s latest offering, an AI agent platform dubbed North, exemplifies its strategy. Designed for private deployment on an organization’s own infrastructure, North appeals to customers like banks and federal agencies handling highly sensitive data. This places Cohere in competition with open-source providers such as DeepSeek and Meta, whose models can also be run locally, often at a lower cost. Cohere’s bet is that superior support for private deployments will give it an edge over open models. Pineau is particularly keen on aligning Cohere’s research more closely with North, exploring secure, private AI agent development, establishing evaluation benchmarks, and studying how networks of AI agents interact in real-world scenarios.

An immediate challenge for Pineau will be addressing the departure of Sara Hooker, Cohere’s Vice President of AI Research, who announced her exit this week after several years of building the company’s research program. Recruiting an AI researcher of Hooker’s caliber is difficult in the current market, given the skyrocketing demand for top AI talent. However, Pineau sees this as an opportunity to “bring in a lot of talent,” noting that several former Meta colleagues expressed interest in following her to a new AI lab. She emphasized, however, that Cohere already possesses a strong base of AI researchers and that strategic hiring is key, stating, “Hiring a bunch of superstars doesn’t necessarily make a superstar team. It’s really about how the people work together.”

The landscape for AI talent has dramatically shifted since Pineau’s departure from Meta just months ago. Mark Zuckerberg’s aggressive recruiting spree over the summer reportedly saw compensation packages exceeding $100 million offered to top AI researchers for Meta Superintelligence Labs. This prompted OpenAI to similarly boost compensation for its star employees, making it increasingly challenging for smaller players to attract and retain elite AI talent. As Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic continue to invest billions in their AI initiatives, Cohere aims to achieve more with fewer resources. For Joelle Pineau, this translates to making calculated research bets that can swiftly translate into compelling products, thereby keeping Cohere competitive in a fiercely contested market.