News Summary

Toronto-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup Cohere has successfully closed a $500 million USD funding round, elevating its valuation to $6.8 billion USD. This funding round was co-led by existing Canadian investors Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital, with participation from AMD Ventures, Nvidia, and Salesforce Ventures, among others. A new investor, Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, also joined the round. Cohere, which specializes in developing large-language models for enterprise AI applications, has also announced the addition of two former high-profile executives to its leadership team. Joelle Pineau, formerly of Meta, has been appointed as the chief AI officer, and Francois Chadwick, previously with Uber, has joined as the CFO. The company plans to use the new funds to expand globally, invest in talent, and enhance its computation capabilities. Cohere has already partnered with major companies such as Bell and the Royal Bank of Canada to provide AI solutions. With this investment, Cohere aims to strengthen its position in the competitive AI market, dominated by players like OpenAI and Google.