The Pulse
Cohere targets C$7 billion in sovereign AI funding round
Cohere says its Series E has reached an initial close and is targeting up to C$7 billion, with a potential valuation of C$35.7 billion. The company says it will use the funding for models, regulated-industry products and computing infrastru
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Cohere announced on October 29 that its Series E funding round has reached an initial close and is targeting up to C$7 billion. The company says the target would value it at C$35.7 billion. Schwarz Group is leading the round; new participants include Bell Ventures, Bullhound Capital and the Government of Canada, while Inovia Capital, NVIDIA and Prosperity7 Ventures are returning investors.
The announcement does not state how much the initial close raised. The C$7 billion figure is the round’s target, not a reported total already secured. Cohere describes the financing as the largest private capital raise in Canadian history.
Funding aimed at models, products and compute
Cohere says it plans to spend the funding on model development, products for regulated industries and long-term computing infrastructure for training enterprise models. Chief Financial Officer Francois Chadwick said in the company’s release that the money would advance its modelling and product roadmap, support industry-specific AI products and help meet customer demand across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific.
In its strategy post, Cohere says its planned Cohere Cyber system will run on-premises, behind the firewall or in fully air-gapped environments. Cohere says it will continue investing in frontier models as well as smaller, more efficient models, with customers choosing based on performance, cost, latency and deployment requirements. The company says the round will support models at different price and performance levels, rather than a single system for every task.
Customer growth accompanies the raise
Cohere says its annual recurring revenue grew 165% year over year through the third quarter of 2026. It also reports that its customer base grew twentyfold over the past year to 300 organizations, naming Aston Martin Aramco, Bell Canada, Fujitsu, RBC, RWS, PwC, TD Bank and TKMS among customers.
Those are company-reported figures; the announcement does not provide revenue totals or a breakdown of customer spending. Cohere says customer additions and expansions across commercial and public-sector organizations drove the ARR growth.
Cybersecurity and allied infrastructure are next
In a separate strategy post, Cohere says it plans to complete its business combination with Germany’s Aleph Alpha and its acquisition of cybersecurity company AISLE over the next 12 months. It also plans to launch Cohere Cyber for air-gapped and classified settings, release a new generation of models and begin frontier-scale training with allied partners.
The company’s argument for sovereign AI is that governments and regulated businesses need choices they can deploy and govern under laws they trust. Schwarz Group says it wants to anchor Cohere’s capabilities on STACKIT, its sovereign cloud infrastructure. Cohere’s round joins Canadian public investment with private capital and a European infrastructure partner, while its stated fundraising target remains up to C$7 billion.