Enterprise AI model maker Cohere announced that they’ve raised $100 million in additional funding, bringing its valuation to $7 billion. This fresh capital marks an extension of a funding round initially announced in August, which at that time was an oversubscribed $500 million raise valuing the company at $6.8 billion. The latest funding highlights Cohere’s growing ties to AMD and its focus on enterprise AI solutions.
Cohere was founded in 2019 by Aidan Gomez, Nick Frosst, and Ivan Zhang, who shared a vision to bring AI-powered tools to businesses. Gomez, one of the minds behind the groundbreaking “Transformer” paper that transformed natural language processing (NLP), leads the company’s mission to make advanced AI accessible and secure for enterprises.
While reaching a $7 billion valuation in just six years is impressive, Cohere faces stiff competition from industry giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, whose valuations have soared even higher. OpenAI recently hit $500 billion, and Anthropic reached $183 billion. Despite this, Cohere’s focus on building AI solutions that prioritize data security and compliance sets it apart, making it a strong choice for companies needing strict control over their information.
Partnering with AMD
Unlike OpenAI, which secured an investment commitment of $100 billion from Nvidia, Cohere has taken a different path by partnering more closely with AMD. The two companies recently expanded their collaboration, enabling Cohere’s full suite of Command-family AI models, spanning vision, translation, and reasoning capabilities, to run on AMD’s Instinct GPUs. This wider compatibility gives customers more flexibility when choosing their AI infrastructure.
Moreover, AMD is not just a technology partner but also an actual customer of Cohere’s platform. And while Cohere continues to support Nvidia GPUs, working with multiple hardware providers strengthens its position as AI adoption grows.
From the very beginning, Cohere has put a strong emphasis on keeping AI secure and giving businesses control over their own data. Their AI models are designed to work with company data internally, so sensitive information isn’t exposed to outside parties. This makes Cohere appealing to organizations that don’t want to hand over their data to big cloud providers or public AI platforms.
Instead of just running everything in the cloud, Cohere often helps clients run AI workloads right on their own premises. This approach meets a crucial need for many businesses and governments that want to tap into AI’s power but with tight control over their sensitive information.
Francois Chadwick, Cohere’s recently appointed chief financial officer, highlighted this unique positioning: “We believe that Cohere’s AI solutions are meeting an ignored demand in the market for technology that truly improves the efficiency of businesses and governments, while keeping full control of their data in their own hands.”
From High Stakes to Fast Growth
The latest funding round brought in new investors Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) and Nexxus Capital Management alongside returning backers Nvidia, AMD, and Salesforce. This influx of capital supports Cohere’s plans to accelerate development and expand its global footprint across North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe.
The company aims to accelerate adoption of its “security-first enterprise AI technology” in both public and private sectors, addressing increasing demand for AI that prioritizes data compliance, privacy, and on-premises deployment options.
Nick Frosst, Cohere’s co-founder, has emphasized the importance of deploying large language models (LLMs) close to the data, stating that models “are only as good as the data they have access to” and for maximum utility, they must run in the customer’s environment securely.
Cohere’s security approach includes multi-layered protection, data autonomy where customers retain full control over their data, compliance with global standards such as GDPR, SOC 2, and ISO 27001, and strong access controls. They also engage in continuous security audits, simulated attacks, and third-party testing.
“The strong investor demand following our first close last month is a big endorsement of our momentum deploying secure and sovereign AI for the enterprise,” said Francois Chadwick.
Cohere has faced many legal challenges like many AI startups. Earlier this year, the company was sued by the News Media Alliance, a group representing major news publishers, accusing Cohere of using copyrighted materials without permission to train its AI models.
Cohere pushed back strongly, calling the lawsuit “misguided and frivolous,” explaining how complex and unresolved the legal questions around AI and data use still are. Despite these hurdles, Cohere has seen rapid growth. The leadership remains committed to building AI responsibly, with a solid emphasis on security and giving enterprises control over their data.
