---
title: Canada Will Invest Up to C$1.6 Billion in Cohere as the AI Company Seeks C$7 Billion
description: Ottawa takes an equity stake in Cohere as the Toronto AI company seeks up to C$7 billion at a C$35.7 billion valuation, led by Schwarz Group.
author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-10-30T12:05:55.857Z
updated: 2026-10-30T12:05:55.877Z
canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/canada-stake-cohere-c7-billion-series-e
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/cohere-aidan-gomez-series-e-510720.webp
categories: Artificial Intelligence
content_type: News
region: Canada
publication: Sovereign Magazine
schema_type: Article
---

The Canadian government will make an equity investment of up to C$1.6 billion in Cohere, the Toronto artificial intelligence company, as part of a Series E round in which Cohere is seeking up to C$7 billion at a C$35.7 billion valuation. Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the investment in Montreal on 29 October, the day Cohere announced the round's initial close, The Logic reported.

In return, Cohere has committed to remain incorporated and headquartered in Canada and to invest at least C$1.7 billion in Canadian computing infrastructure by 2030, Carney said. Cohere has not disclosed how much of the C$7 billion investors have committed so far.

Germany's Schwarz Group is leading the round. Bell Ventures, Bullhound Capital and the federal government are new investors, and Inovia Capital, Nvidia and Prosperity7 Ventures are investing again. Cohere, founded in 2019, sells AI models and software to governments and to businesses in regulated industries, which can run its systems in a private cloud, on their own servers or in air-gapped environments cut off from the internet.

## The Round Would Be the Largest Ever Raised by a Canadian Tech Company

Cohere says the Series E is the largest private financing round ever undertaken by a Canadian technology company. The biggest before it were the C$1.24 billion that Vancouver legal software company Clio raised in 2024, which included some secondary sales, and the US$1 billion that Toronto autonomous-driving company Waabi raised in January, according to The Logic. Aidan Gomez, Cohere's co-founder and chief executive, called the government's investment "a huge honour, not only for Cohere but for the country".

Cohere's previous round raised US$600 million across two closings in 2025, when the company was valued at US$7 billion. In September, The Logic, citing sources who spoke to The Globe and Mail, reported that Cohere was in advanced talks to raise US$2 billion to US$3 billion at a US$20 billion valuation. At the Bank of Canada's exchange rate on 28 October, the C$7 billion target is about US$5 billion and the C$35.7 billion valuation is about US$25.4 billion.

OpenAI announced a US$122 billion raise in March at a US$852 billion valuation, and Anthropic raised US$65 billion at a US$965 billion valuation in May, The Logic reported. Cohere's founders say the company needs less capital than the US labs because its business customers often pay for their own computing, The Logic reported in September.

## Carney Says the Most Powerful AI Is Concentrated in Too Few Companies and Countries

Carney cast the investment as Canada keeping the commercial returns of its own AI work at home, The Logic reported. "The most powerful AI systems are concentrated in a very small number of companies, in a very small number of countries," he said. "That concentration carries risks: to cost, to resilience and to sovereignty."

Evan Solomon, the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, said: "It is not enough for great companies to start in Canada. We want them to grow here, build here and create good jobs here."

> "It is in all our interests for Cohere to succeed, and now all Canadians will have a share in that success."
> — Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada

Ottawa previously pledged up to C$240 million toward a C$725 million Cohere project to buy computing capacity at a data centre in Cambridge, Ontario, being built by CoreWeave, where Cohere will be the anchor tenant. That was the first investment from the C$2 billion Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy. The federal Crown corporations BDC Capital and Export Development Canada have also invested in Cohere.

## Schwarz Group Plans to Run Cohere's Models on Its STACKIT Cloud

Schwarz Digits, the IT and digital division of Schwarz Group, committed US$600 million to the Series E in April as part of the deal that [combined Cohere with the German AI company Aleph Alpha](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/europe-sovereign-ai-talk-vs-action). Christian Müller, chief executive of Schwarz Digits, called the investment the next step after that combination. "Our clear goal is to anchor these frontier capabilities in our sovereign STACKIT cloud infrastructure," he said.

Karsten Wildberger, Germany's digital minister, congratulated Cohere and cited the Sovereign Tech Alliance as an example of [German-Canadian cooperation on AI](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/canada-germany-300m-lawzero-bengio-ai-safety).

## Cohere Says Its Customer Base Grew 20-Fold to 300 in a Year

Cohere says its annual recurring revenue at the end of the third quarter of 2026 was 165% higher than a year earlier, driven by new customers and larger contracts since it launched North, its platform for AI agents. It now counts 300 customers, 20 times as many as a year ago, including Aston Martin Aramco, Bell Canada, Fujitsu, RBC, RWS, PwC, TD Bank and TKMS.

Francois Chadwick, Cohere's chief financial officer, said the money will go to its models and products, to "fully verticalized AI solutions for regulated industries", and to long-term computing capacity for training its enterprise models, as Cohere expands across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific. Its deals this year, including the Aleph Alpha combination, Reliant AI and AISLE, have added healthcare, life sciences and cybersecurity work to its platform, Cohere says.

More on Cohere is at [cohere.com](https://cohere.com).

## FAQ

**Q: Is Cohere a Publicly Traded Company?**
No. Cohere is a private company that raises money through private funding rounds, so there is no Cohere stock on a public exchange. Cohere made no mention of a stock market listing when it announced the Series E.

**Q: What Share of Cohere Would C$1.6 Billion Buy?**
Neither Cohere nor the government has disclosed the size of the stake. At the round's C$35.7 billion valuation, C$1.6 billion would be about 4.5% of the company, by our arithmetic.

**Q: How Much Had Cohere Raised Before the Series E?**
About US$1.6 billion, according to PitchBook data cited by The Logic in September.

**Q: What Is the Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy?**
A C$2 billion federal programme to give Canada's AI sector access to computing infrastructure, including C$700 million to finance the construction and expansion of commercial AI data centres, BetaKit reported. Cohere's compute project was its first investment.