The $500M AI Startup Taking on OpenAI--And Winning Where It Hurts Most

Cohere just pulled in a fresh $500 million, pushing its valuation to $6.8 billionand it's not trying to be the next OpenAI. It's carving its own lane. Unlike OpenAI, Google, or Elon Musk's xAI, Cohere doesn't chase consumers. It builds enterprise-first AI models that run behind corporate firewalls, trained directly on client data. That's starting to resonate. Deals with Oracle, Dell, Fujitsu, LG, and RBC are stacking up, especially as privacy, compliance, and geopolitical uncertainty climb the priority list for global businesses. Cohere's bet? That trustnot viralitywill win the AI race in the enterprise lane.

Since January, the company has doubled annual recurring revenue to $100 million and is targeting $200 million by the end of the year. It's not burning billions like its rivals either. Investors say the margins look fundamentally different here, and though the adoption cycle is slower in the enterprise world, it tends to be more durable. Cohere also just rolled out North, its new platform for AI agents that can execute online tasksaimed squarely at companies that want advanced AI without handing over their data. Meanwhile, it's hired Joelle Pineau (ex-Meta META as Chief AI Officer and Uber's UBER former finance head Francois Chadwick as CFO to scale the next phase.

OpenAI may be eyeing a $500 billion valuation and Anthropic could hit $170 billion, but Cohere is quietly playing a different game. It's targeting security-conscious multinationals and riding a global wave of demand for sovereign AIespecially outside the U.S., where President Donald Trump's tougher foreign policy tone has reignited concerns over American tech dependence. CEO Aidan Gomez says those discussions were already happening, but they're heating up. In a space where most players are chasing scale, Cohere is positioning itself as the one that enterprises trust to stay in control.