Cohere, the Toronto-based startup building large language models for business customers, has long had a lot in common with its hometown hockey team, the Maple Leafs. They are a solid franchise and a big deal in Canada, but they’ve not made a Stanley Cup Final since 1967. Similarly, Cohere has built a string of solid, if not spectacular, LLMs and has established itself as the AI national champion of Canada. But it’s struggled for traction against better-known and better-funded rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. Now it’s making a renewed bid for relevancy: Last month the company raised $500 million, boosting its valuation to nearly $7 billion; hired its first CFO; and landed a marquee recruit in Joelle Pineau, Meta’s longtime head of AI research.
Pineau announced her departure from Meta in April, just weeks before Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a sweeping AI reorganization that included acquiring Scale AI, elevating its cofounder Alex Wang to chief AI officer, and launching a costly spree to poach dozens of top researchers. For Cohere, her arrival is a coup and a reputational boost at a moment when many in the industry wondered whether the company could go the distance—or whether it would be acquired or fade away.
