Cohere has closed the first stage of its Series E, announced on 29 October 2026. The Toronto AI company is aiming for as much as C$7bn at a valuation of C$35.7bn, and says that if it gets there it will be the largest private raise a Canadian tech company has made. Companies belonging to Schwarz Group lead the round. Bell Ventures, Bullhound Capital and the Government of Canada come in as new investors, while Inovia Capital, Nvidia and Prosperity7 Ventures are returning backers.
“Canada’s investment in Cohere is an investment in choice, in security and in our ability to live our lives as we choose. Today, true sovereignty depends on our ability to build, adopt and govern AI on our own terms”
Mark Carney, Canadian prime minister, on the Canadian government's stake · siliconrepublic.com ↗
The company backs the raise with growth figures: annual recurring revenue rose 165% year on year for the period to the end of the third quarter, and the customer list grew twentyfold in a year to roughly 300. Names include Aston Martin Aramco, Bell Canada, Fujitsu, RBC, PwC and TD Bank. Cohere is headquartered in Toronto and has offices in San Francisco, London, New York, Berlin, Montreal, Ottawa, Singapore, Paris, Tokyo, Seoul and the UAE. It cites a McKinsey projection of a $600bn market for sovereign AI. The government's equity stake, Cohere says, is meant to help it scale from Canada, supporting jobs and computing capacity, and the commitments around it are tied to the investment.
The money is earmarked for the model and product roadmap, AI tailored to regulated industries, and long-term computing capacity for training enterprise models, with expansion across North America, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. Schwarz Digits, the group's technology arm, recently committed billions to German data-centre capacity and plans to anchor Cohere's frontier work in its STACKIT sovereign cloud. Cohere has also signed deals this year for Aleph Alpha, Reliant AI and AISLE, and shipped releases including North 2, Command A+, Cohere Transcribe, Parse 5, Embed 5, Rerank 5, North Mini Code and North Small Translate. Chief executive Aidan Gomez called the round a record for private capital raised in Canada.
Cohere co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez
Cohere · Image: Silicon Republic
Cohere pitches all of this as sovereign AI, meaning organisations in regulated sectors and governments can run and govern their own systems. Politicians were quick to frame the round as a sovereignty story. Prime minister Mark Carney called Canada's stake an investment in choice and security, and Canada's AI minister Evan Solomon said entrepreneurs should not have to leave the country to build a global business. Germany's digital minister Karsten Wildberger saw market confidence in sovereign AI and in the vision Cohere shares with Aleph Alpha, and Schwarz Digits chief executive Christian Müller described digital sovereignty as strategic choice and keeping control of your own data. Co-founders Gomez, Nicholas Frosst and Ivan Zhang say the aim is a frontier company outside the US and China.
About Cohere
Cohere is an AI company based in Toronto that builds sovereign AI for regulated industries and governments, so organisations can run and govern their own systems; its platform is called North.
It has raised money on a similar footing before. In August 2025 it raised $500m at a $6.8bn valuation, followed by $100m in a second close the next month. On 19 August 2025 it signed a memorandum of understanding with the Government of Canada to apply its AI across the public sector. In April 2026 it said Schwarz Group intended to lead the Series E with a $600m (€500m) structured commitment, and that month it also agreed to acquire Germany's Aleph Alpha.
2019
Founded
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Models on AIPopDB
The raise follows a run of earlier steps. In August 2025 Cohere raised $500m at a $6.8bn valuation and added $100m a month later, and on 19 August 2025 it signed a memorandum of understanding with the Canadian government to use its AI across the public sector. In April 2026 it said Schwarz Group planned to lead the Series E with a $600m (€500m) structured commitment, and it agreed to buy Aleph Alpha that month. The round is still open, and this is only the initial close: Cohere is raising towards its C$7bn target.
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