TL;DR:
• Cohere raises $500M at $6.8B valuation, up from $5.5B last year
• AMD, Nvidia, and Salesforce Ventures double down as existing investors
• Enterprise-focused AI strategy differentiates from OpenAI's consumer approach
• Recent executive hires signal aggressive expansion plans
Cohere just landed a $6.8 billion valuation in an oversubscribed $500 million funding round, cementing its position as the enterprise AI alternative to consumer-focused models. The Toronto-based startup attracted double-down investments from AMD, Nvidia, and Salesforce, signaling major tech players are betting big on security-first enterprise AI solutions.
Cohere just proved that enterprise AI is having its moment. The Toronto startup announced Thursday it closed an oversubscribed $500 million round at a $6.8 billion valuation, marking a 24% jump from its $5.5 billion valuation just over a year ago.
The funding surge comes as enterprise customers increasingly demand AI solutions built specifically for their security and compliance needs, rather than retrofitted consumer models. "Cohere represents a security-first category of enterprise AI that is simply not being met by repurposed consumer models," the company stated in its announcement, taking a clear shot at competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic.
What's particularly telling is who's writing the checks. AMD Ventures, Nvidia, and Salesforce Ventures all participated as existing investors, doubling down on their previous bets. The round was led by Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital, with Radical's portfolio including high-profile names like Fei-Fei Li's World Labs and enterprise AI darling Hebbia.
Founded in 2019 by Aidan Gomez, one of the co-authors of the seminal "Attention Is All You Need" paper that birthed the transformer architecture powering today's AI revolution, Cohere has been quietly building an enterprise-first moat while competitors chase consumer headlines.
