Who Gets to Build the Frontier for AI
Cohere, Thursday, October 29th, 2026
Cohere announces the initial close of a Series E targeting up to CAD $7 billion, led by Schwarz Group, to build a non-US, non-China frontier AI firm.
Investors include Bell Ventures, Bullhound Capital, Inovia Capital, NVIDIA, Prosperity7 Ventures and the Government of Canada.
Cohere says it will build frontier models that compete with the best, a secure platform letting institutions own the AI they run, and cyber defenses for democracies.
It argues AI will become operating infrastructure for economies, public services and defence, and that institutions should be able to choose systems built under laws they trust, inspectable and deployable in their own environments.
It says many organizations now face a choice between cheap Chinese models and powerful ones they cannot fully control.