Cohere is an enterprise-focused AI company that develops large language models and multilingual generative AI for regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, government, and manufacturing. Founded in 2019 by former Google researchers and based in Toronto with a major presence in San Francisco, the company has deliberately prioritized business customers over consumer chatbots, emphasizing data privacy, security, and flexible deployment.
The firm offers its Command and Aya model families via APIs, private cloud, and on-premises deployments, enabling enterprises to build generation, search, classification, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications on top of their own data. Backed by strategic investors including Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce Ventures, and PSP Investments, Cohere has positioned itself as an independent, cloud-agnostic alternative to Big Tech AI providers, with a particular focus on data sovereignty and non-US markets.
Cohere’s annualized revenue grew from roughly $13 million in 2023 to the tens of millions by early 2024, and the company is targeting $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by the end of 2025, supported by ~80% gross margins on its private deployment business. The latest internal estimates from Summit Ventures imply a valuation of approximately $6.8 billion as of August 2025 following a $500 million capital raise, reflecting investor confidence in Cohere’s enterprise AI thesis and its ability to scale into a leading independent platform for regulated industries.