
Cohere launches AI agent platform for businesses
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The company is aiming to sell its agentic AI platform, called North, to private and public sector organizations in Canada and worldwide. Cohere is 'working with large enterprises across key markets in North America, APAC, and EMEA,' it told the Financial Post in an emailed statement.
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Cohere initially debuted North in January. The startup integrated the platform into the workflows of a select group of companies including the Royal Bank of Canada, Dell Technologies Inc. and South Korea's LG CNS Co. Ltd., an IT service firm and subsidiary of conglomerate LG Corporation.
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Cohere and RBC for instance, jointly developed North for Banking, a generative and agentic AI workspace tailored to financial services firms. The platform lets users search for answers and solutions via a customized chatbot, and to use AI agents to automate tasks from drafting emails to summarizing reports and creating data visualizations.
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Last week, Cohere announced a partnership with telecommunications giant BCE Inc. to sell AI tools to governments and businesses in Canada. The tie-up will allow organizations to access Cohere's AI services, including North and its large language models, through Bell Canada's AI data centres and fibre network.
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Cohere's public launch of its AI agent platform comes as the startup makes a major push to secure its position as Canada's top AI provider and as a leading global supplier of AI tools for enterprises.
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In June, the company announced a new alliance to deploy its AI tools and platforms across the Canadian and U.K. governments to 'strengthen the public sector and national security,' it said in an official release.
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In July, Cohere said that it would open a second Canadian office in Montreal this year, which will initially hire seven staff, with the aim to triple that number within a year. In the same month, the company launched a new office in Seoul, South Korea, in an effort to shore up its regional operations and to win more Asia-based clients.
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Cohere has over 400 staff in offices in Toronto, San Francisco, New York and London, with the majority of its workers based in Canada. Founded in 2019, the startup has raised over US$970 million from investors like chip giant Nvidia Corporation, cloud computing provider Oracle Corporation, and Quebec-based venture capital firm Inovia Capital.
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Global News
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