Artificial intelligence developer Cohere has raised $500mn in a new funding round, making it one of the world’s most valuable start-ups in the field, boosting the Canadian company’s efforts to take on rivals including OpenAI and Anthropic.
The funding round values Cohere at $5.5bn. Founded by ex-Google researchers in 2019, it is in fierce competition with larger rivals to secure lucrative contracts with companies scrambling to build AI into their businesses.
The capital was “going towards new models, [computing power] and headcount. It continues the momentum we have,” said Josh Gartner, a spokesperson for Cohere. It plans to double its staff to about 500 this year.