Nvidia (NVDA) has invested in another AI name most investors have never heard of. This time it’s Cohere, a Toronto-based company in talks to raise up to $3 billion. According to a Bloomberg report, the round would value the company at $20 billion. That is nearly triple the $7 billion valuation it carried just a year ago. If it closes, it would be the largest funding round ever for a private Canadian startup. What I find interesting is where the funding is coming from. The Canadian government is putting in money directly, and Germany is in talks to join too.
Cohere isn’t chasing consumers the way most AI names do. Companies like OpenAI build chatbots for regular people. Cohere builds AI that banks, governments, and hospitals can run on their own servers. This keeps their data inside the building. That pitch is called “sovereign AI,” and it’s landed Cohere deals with the Royal Bank of Canada, Oracle (ORCL), and Bell Canada. Its flagship product, a platform called North, lets these clients deploy AI agents inside their own walls. The numbers explain the interest. Annual recurring revenue nearly quadrupled to $240 million in 2025, up from $62 million a year earlier.
