Cohere ‘Not Chasing AGI’ as AI Startup’s Value Hits $5 Billion

AI startup Cohere has been valued at $5.5 billion following a new funding round.

As Bloomberg News reported Monday (July 22), this $500 million round brings Cohere’s total funding to $970 million.

According to the report, Canada-based Cohere is the rare artificial intelligence (AI) startup creating massive large language models from scratch, partly because the technology is extremely expensive and difficult to build.

And while rivals such as OpenAI and Google are trying to build artificial general intelligence, or AGI, or AI software that can perform tasks at or above the level of humans, Cohere is instead focused on more practical goals, Co-founder Nick Frosst told Bloomberg.

“We’re not out there chasing AGI,” he said. “We’re trying to make models that can be efficiently run in an enterprise to solve real problems.”

The company, Bloomberg notes, has clients from an array of industries, including retailers, tech companies and banks. For example, Toronto-Dominion Bank, a new customer, plans to use Cohere’s AI for tasks like answering questions based on financial documents.

“My favorite use cases of this technology are the ones that power things that nobody wants to do,” Frosst said.

That means things like the startup Borderless AI using Cohere’s models to answer questions on employment law around the world in multiple languages.

Meanwhile, recent research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows that most large companies are struggling to deploy AI in meaningful ways, lagging the race to leverage AI. The findings in “The Impact of GenAI on a COO’s Priorities,” the third edition of PYMNTS Intelligence’s “2024 CAIO Project,” present a sobering reality check for the AI revolution.

The report, based on surveys of chief operating officers from companies with at least $1 billion in yearly revenue, uncovers a major gap between the perceived potential of generative AI and how it is now being applied in the corporate world.

The research showed that 70% of those COOs agreed that GenAI is a critical part of strategic planning. Still, there is a gap between aspiration and reality.

“This disconnect between vision and execution is particularly striking, given AI’s high-profile nature in today’s business landscape,” PYMNTS wrote last week. “With tech giants and startups alike touting its transformative power, many had expected to see more rapid and widespread adoption of advanced AI applications in large enterprises.”