Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Thursday, Oct. 29, that Canada's government will make an equity investment of up to about 1.6 billion Canadian dollars in Cohere, the Toronto company that builds AI for businesses and governments. An equity investment buys a share of the company, so the government will own part of Cohere and, in its words, share in the company's success. The government calls it a commercial investment announced alongside private investors, and says the money will go in stages, with regular reports on whether Cohere keeps its promises.
The government's reason is what it and Cohere call sovereign AI: AI that businesses and governments can run under their own control, deciding where sensitive data is stored, how it is used and who can see it. "Today, true sovereignty depends on our ability to build, adopt, and govern AI on our own terms," Carney said. Cohere says organizations want an independent alternative in an AI market it says is increasingly concentrated, with more and more of it in fewer companies' hands. Aidan Gomez, Cohere's co-founder and chief executive, said organizations "need solutions that give them greater control over their data, infrastructure, and how AI is deployed."
In return, the government says Cohere will create at least 1,000 high-paying technical jobs in Canada by 2030, put at least C$1.7 billion more into computing infrastructure in Canada, the data centers and computers that train and run its AI, by 2030, keep its Canadian incorporation and headquarters, and keep working with the Canadian AI Safety Institute.
The government's money is part of a larger round. Cohere says it has signed up the first investors in a fundraise that aims to raise up to C$7 billion, which would value the company at C$35.7 billion. Germany's Schwarz Group, which Cohere calls one of Europe's largest investors in AI and cloud computing, leads the round; Bell Ventures, Bullhound Capital and the Government of Canada are new investors, and NVIDIA, Inovia Capital and Prosperity7 Ventures are putting in money again. Cohere calls it the largest private funding round ever for a Canadian technology company.
Founded in Toronto in 2019, Cohere sells AI to banks, governments and other closely regulated organizations that can run it in their own data centers or on machines cut off from the internet. The company says its recurring revenue, what its ongoing customer contracts bring in over a year, was 165% higher at the end of its third quarter of 2026 than a year earlier, and that it now has 300 customers, 20 times as many as a year ago.
Cohere has not said how much of the C$7 billion it has raised so far, and neither side has said how big a share the government will own or when each stage of its money will arrive.