Cohere Announces Oversubscribed $500M Funding Round Propelling Valuation to $6.8 Billion Cohere revealed Thursday it has completed a $500 million oversubscribed funding round, pushing its valuation to $6.8 billion. This marks a significant increase from the $55 billion valuation achieved over a year ago when the company secured its previous $500 million round. Based in Toronto, Cohere emerged as one of the earliest large language model (LLM) development companies in 2019, founded by Aidan Gomez—a co-author of the landmark "Attention Is All You Need" paper that laid the foundation for modern AI. While the AI landscape has been dominated by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta in recent competitions, Cohere has strategically positioned itself as a provider of secure LLM solutions tailored exclusively for enterprise use rather than consumer applications. This focus has enabled the company to forge partnerships with major players in enterprise technology, including Oracle, Dell Technologies, Bell, Fujitsu, LG's CNS consulting arm, SAP, and corporations like Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). The current round also attracted new investors such as the Ontario Pension Plan's healthcare division. The press release humorously highlighted that Cohere "represents a distinct category of enterprise-first AI solutions where security-driven needs cannot be addressed by modified consumer models." Despite this niche positioning, Cohere faces the same AI talent war plaguing competitors. It recently poached Joelle Pineau—former Meta research leader—as Chief AI Officer and recruited CFO Francois Chadwick from KPMG's consulting arm. Chadwick previously served as CFO at Uber and Shield AI. The funding round was led by Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital, with participation from existing investors including AMD Ventures, Nvidia, and Salesforce Ventures. Notably, Oracle—which supported Cohere in 2023—is absent from the list of continuing investors. This shift aligns with Oracle's recent strategic alignment with OpenAI, particularly through their Stargate data center initiative.