Cohere

Artificial Intelligence · Sovereign AI · Enterprise Software

Funding

Cohere targets C$7B Series E at C$35.7B valuation, Canada's biggest-ever raise

Canada's government is taking a direct equity stake, betting taxpayer money that domestic AI sovereignty beats relying on US or Chinese models.

• Cohere announced the initial close of a Series E round led by Schwarz Group, targeting up to CAD $7 billion (about $5 billion USD) at a CAD $35.7 billion (~$25.5 billion USD) valuation — the largest private financing round in Canadian tech history.
• The Toronto-based company builds 'sovereign AI' — frontier language models that governments and regulated industries like banks and hospitals can run on their own infrastructure instead of depending on US or Chinese providers.
• The Canadian government is investing up to CAD $1.6 billion (~$1.14 billion USD) for an equity stake, with Cohere committing to spend CAD $1.7 billion on domestic compute infrastructure by 2030 and keep its headquarters in Canada.
• Cohere's annual recurring revenue grew more than 165% year-over-year through Q3 2026, and its customer base expanded 20x to roughly 300 clients including RBC, TD Bank, PwC and Fujitsu.
• The new valuation roughly triples Cohere's worth from about $7 billion USD a year earlier; lead investor Schwarz Group had already committed $600 million in April tied to Cohere's merger with Germany's Aleph Alpha.
• Cohere has not disclosed how much of the CAD $7 billion target is already committed, with CFO Francois Chadwick saying the initial close includes 'most of it.'
• Ottawa's direct stake reflects a broader push by Western governments to fund domestic AI champions, as more than 70% of open-model AI tokens served through OpenRouter now come from Chinese models, up from just 3% a year earlier.