Cohere Targets $5 Billion Valuation for ChatGPT Rival

Canadian artificial intelligence (AI) startup Cohere is reportedly in advanced discussions to raise $500 million.

That funding would value the company — which makes foundation models to compete with ChatGPT creator OpenAI — at $5 billion, Reuters reported Thursday (March 21), citing a source familiar with the matter.

According to that source, Cohere’s annualized revenue run rate has climbed to $22 million this month from $13 million in December as it debuted its new model Command-R. Cohere was valued at $2.2 billion in June of 2023 after raising $220 million.

The Reuters report notes that Cohere has tried to sell its potential to backers by developing enterprise-focused AI models. The company has a partnership with Oracle and also aims to make its models available through other major cloud providers, the report said.

PYMNTS has contacted Cohere for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

The company was founded by former Google researchers, among them CEO Aidan Gomez, co-author of a landmark paper in AI research. That paper, titled “Attention is All You Need,” led to significant advancements in the way computers analyze and generate text.

Last year, Gomez wrote a letter to staff criticizing effective altruism, a movement focused on how to do the most good for humanity, and which has been critical of AI.

Gomez argued the movement has become dogmatic and self-aggrandizing, and warned of people who believe they are uniquely qualified to help others, stating that they may be inclined to take extreme actions to achieve their goals.

The philosophy became famous thanks to one of its most high-profile adherents: FTX founder and convicted cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

Elsewhere on the AI front, PYMNTS this week examined Apple’s recent deal with Google to bring that company’s artificial intelligence tech to the iPhone.

Speaking with PYMNTS, Michael Jaconi, CEO of the AI marketing tech company Button, touched on a few different ways the deal could impact the AI landscape, including the potential for Apple to drive consumer adoption of AI.

“They could enable consumer adoption at unparalleled scale by enabling seamless AI integration into iPhone search and Siri functions,” Jaconi said. “Unlocking AI-powered app connections that control both your digital and physical world at a pace no other company could rival. With this, Apple would bring the concept that the iPhone is a remote control for daily life closer to reality than ever before.”