Canadian government backs Cohere's AI expansion with up to $240m under its sovereign compute strategy
Cohere Inc., a Toronto- and San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup, announced a partnership with CoreWeave Inc. to develop a multibillion-dollar AI data centre in Canada.
According to BNN Bloomberg, the Canadian government will provide financial backing for the project through its $2bn Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy, offering up to $240m in support.
CoreWeave will construct the data centre, but its location has yet to be disclosed. Cohere plans to invest heavily in the project, ensuring sufficient computing power to train its models while also offering capacity for other AI players.
No financial details beyond the government’s support have been made public.
Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne called the project a testament to effective policy implementation, stating, “Canadian champions drawing in billions of dollars in investment to build infrastructure is a home run when it comes to putting policy in action.”
Founded in 2019 by Aidan Gomez, Nick Frosst, and Ivan Zhang, Cohere is valued at over $5.5bn and employs around 400 people.
Backed by prominent investors such as Nvidia, Oracle, Cisco, Public Sector Pension Investment Board, and Inovia Capital, the company has raised $970m to date.
Initially specializing in large language models to generate text for businesses, Cohere has shifted its focus to creating tailored and secure AI models.
In a letter to employees and investors, CEO Aidan Gomez emphasized the importance of helping companies navigate challenges in adopting generative AI.
At the end of March 2024, Cohere had reached $35m in annualized revenue, a significant increase from $13m at the close of 2023, according to a source familiar with the company’s finances.
