A record round for Canadian AI
Toronto-based Cohere has announced the initial close of a Series E funding round targeting up to CAD $7 billion, which would value the company at CAD $35.7 billion — roughly US $5 billion and US $20.5 billion respectively. The company describes the round as the largest private financing ever undertaken by a Canadian technology company.
The companies of Schwarz Group, one of Europe’s largest investors in AI and cloud infrastructure, are leading the round. New investors include Bell Ventures, Bullhound Capital, and the Government of Canada, while Inovia Capital, NVIDIA, and Prosperity7 Ventures are returning as existing backers.
Cohere builds sovereign AI systems for regulated industries and governments — organizations that want tighter control over their data, infrastructure, governance, and deployment environments. The company said the funding will advance its model and product roadmap, develop vertical AI products for regulated sectors, and support long-term compute infrastructure, with expansion across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific.
The announcement also points to fast commercial momentum: Cohere said annual recurring revenue grew 165% year over year by the end of the third quarter of 2026, and that its customer base grew twentyfold over the past year to 300 customers. One detail to watch is that this is an initial close, not a completed round — the company has not disclosed how much of the target is already committed.
For teams comparing enterprise AI platforms, the raise underlines how much investor appetite remains for AI that can run inside strict security and compliance boundaries rather than only in the public cloud. See how leading models such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini compare in our directory.
Source: Morningstar / PR Newswire
