Canadian AI firm Cohere, Inc. and Aleph Alpha GmbH in Germany are officially joining forces, as the two companies have announced a merger.
This deal will also see support from both the Canadian and German governments. Representatives of each government are set to attend the formal announcement in Germany on Friday morning.
Despite it being framed as a merger, the new combined company will bear the Cohere name, with Gomez staying on as CEO. The Globe and Mail noted that Gomez declined to comment on the makeup of the executive team, and where the exact headquarters will be (although the publication did say that the company will have offices in both Toronto and Berlin), Gomez did say that “Cohere is going to remain Canadian headquartered and owned.”
This merger gives Cohere greater access to the European market, as companies, governments, and public institutions seek alternatives to American tech amid a broader digital sovereignty push to gain greater control over key systems. Also, because there is a lot of (obvious) disdain for the U.S. currently.
C0here also said that the Schwarz Group, a major German holding company known for owning the supermarket chain Lidl, is investing approximately. C$817 million in financing as part of an upcoming funding round. Valued at roughly C$9.5 billion, The Globe and Mail notes that Cohere has raised a whopping C$2.3 billion to date from companies such as Radical Ventures, Inovia Capital, the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, PSP Investments, and Nvidia Corp, among others.
To add more context, both companies focus on Large Language Model development; however, Aleph Alpha later shifted away from training its own LLMs to focus on assisting both corporate and government customers in implementing the technology through its own platform, PhariaAI.
Similar to Alpha, Cohere has been partnering with several major Canadian entities, such as Bell and the Canadian Government, to implement its LLM and other AI products into the day-to-day operations of both organizations.
The deal is currently subject to approval by Aleph Alpha’s shareholders, and financial terms have not yet been disclosed.
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Source: The Globe and Mail
