Latest news with #AttentionIsAllYouNeed
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Cohere seeks $500m funding to advance AI development
Cohere, a Canadian artificial intelligence start-up, is reportedly seeking to raise more than $500m (C$685m) in a new funding round. This move aims to strengthen its position in the competitive AI landscape, alongside industry leaders such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. Cohere is targeting a valuation of more than $5.5bn, reported Financial Times, citing sources familiar with the discussions. According to the media report, the valuation could potentially reach between $6bn and $6.5bn, although discussions remain in the early stages. This anticipated funding would position Cohere among the most valuable start-ups in the AI sector, despite trailing behind US competitors that have seen significant valuation increases. In April 2025, OpenAI achieved a $300bn valuation, up from $157bn in 2024, while Anthropic's funding round in March increased its valuation to $61.5bn. Cohere was founded by former Google researchers, including CEO Aidan Gomez, a co-author of the influential "Attention Is All You Need" paper, which introduced the transformer AI architecture. Unlike its competitors, Cohere has not launched a consumer-facing app, instead it is focusing on enterprise and privacy-centric solutions. The company has developed "open" models like the Aya multilingual models, accessible for developers to build upon, entering a market with competitors such as Meta and start-ups Mistral and DeepSeek. Cohere's founders, including Gomez, Nick Frosst, and Ivan Zhang, are also pursuing contracts with tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, which offer their own AI models to enterprises. Cohere has doubled its annual recurring revenue in the past four months, surpassing $100m last month. "A lot of the consumer adoption happened right away," said a source close to Cohere. "Enterprise tends to be slower in adoption but stickier in terms of users. Companies aren't known to adopt tech early." The development of advanced AI models demands significant financial investment for training and computing power. Nearly three years after OpenAI's ChatGPT sparked the AI boom, investors are eager to see returns on their investments in AI model creators. Cohere has also launched North, a platform enabling businesses to build AI agents for office tasks, although it is currently available to a limited number of customers. In December 2024, it was reported that Cohere plans to build an 'multibillion-dollar' AI data centre in Canada with financial support from the Canadian government. "Cohere seeks $500m funding to advance AI development" was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Errore nel recupero dei dati Effettua l'accesso per consultare il tuo portafoglio Errore nel recupero dei dati Errore nel recupero dei dati Errore nel recupero dei dati Errore nel recupero dei dati
India Today
30-04-2025
- Business
- India Today
Gemini 2.5 Pro is so good that it is Empire Strikes Back moment in AI fight between Google and OpenAI
At a time when OpenAI and its ChatGPT models have hogged all the limelight it is easy to forget that Google is the OG in AI. The company has been at it for over a decade, with its AI efforts largely spearheaded by researchers at DeepMind. In fact, the current AI revolution and breakthroughs are a direct result of a paper — and which has now attained a mythical reputation — called Attention Is All You Need. The paper was written by Google researchers. And yet, when we think of AI we think of OpenAI and ChatGPT. With Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, the latest model from the tech giant, this is changing. advertisementThe reason why OpenAI has hogged all the limelight is because it has been better at turning AI research into actual products. While Google has been the lab leader, OpenAI has been better at bringing its AI tools to the public. Google, in a way, was caught off-guard by ChatGPT 3 in 2022. The company scrambled to respond, and in a furry even ended up making a few mistakes. Its initial challenges to the GPT 3 were not good at all. In 2025, to use a much-cliched phrase, the Empire Is Striking Back. And it is doing so with the Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental). Since it arrived on the scene a few weeks ago, the Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental) has wowed its users. This is the first AI system from Google that feels as good as — and in many instances better — than the best tools available from OpenAI. And whether in actual use, or in benchmarks, the Gemini 2.5 Pro has excelled. Take a look at the benchmarks: advertisement But more than the benchmarks the new Gemini has impressed users. Social media — mostly X aka Twitter because that is where action is — nowadays is full of thumbs ups from people saying how Gemini 2.5 Pro excels at coding, or writing, or analysing documents. Unlike the recent ChatGPT 4o, which turned into a parrot eulogising and flattering its users, the Gemini has a measured tone and a more authoritative personality. It does not by any means sound unhelpful. Instead, it is measured in a way a professional helper would be. When I try an AI tool like Gemini, DeepSeek or ChatGPT, I usually ask it to write a paragraph or two in the style of Jon Fosse. Now, Fosse is a writer — and here I am talking of his work translated in English — who uses a minimalistic language and a sparse voice, but one which gets its force from the way the Norwegian writer creates rhythm with repetitions. For AI, coding is easy nowadays. It excels at logic. But writing a few lines of fiction is still a difficult job for it. And on that, it is very difficult for an AI tool to write a paragraph that reflects the style used by Fosse. They can write in Hemingway style — well, sort of — but not Fosse. In my experience, so far the only AI tool that has managed some sort of coherency in this has been the Gemini 2.5 Pro. advertisementThere is another reason why the Gemini 2.5 Pro is such a key AI tool. Unlike the best tools from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic, the Gemini 2.5 Pro is free to use. In this aspect it is somewhat like DeepSeek R1. But unlike DeepSeek R1, which often found itself getting a hammering due to load on its servers, Gemini 2.5 Pro can probably handle millions of users simultaneously. The backend that powers Google services is one of the best, if not the absolute best, that any tech company has. In many ways, this makes the Gemini 2.5 Pro the first top-class AI model that most people in the world can as good as the Gemini 2.5 Pro is, there is another aspect to it, and that is how Google vs OpenAI is going to look like in future. So far it seemed that OpenAI was landing all the blows. But I have a suspicion that the Gemini 2.5 Pro is just the beginning of a counter strike. Google has some of the best AI researchers. It also has the kind of data that other companies can only dream of. And finally it has a massive scale — in everything — which OpenAI currently doesn't still needs to get better at showing its AI tools to people. For example, its NotebookLLM, which can turn a paragraph into a long podcast, is superb. Similarly, there are a number of other Gemini and Google AI tools that are top class in what they do. But they remain scattered across Google services and products, and in many cases accessing them requires — like literally — an engineering degree because Google has placed them in virtual silos that are accessible only to developers. But I feel these are the niggles that a company like Google will sort out in the coming months. The new Gemini interface in itself is a big improvement in terms of accessibility and user experience compared to what we had a year ago. A more pressing matter for Google was to prove that it could match ChatGPT and Claude. With the Gemini 2.5 Pro it has done that.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Rivian elects Cohere's CEO to its board in latest signal the EV maker is bullish on AI
Aidan Gomez, the co-founder and CEO of generative AI startup Cohere, has joined the board of EV maker Rivian, according to a regulatory filing. The appointment is the latest sign that Rivian sees promises in applying AI to its own venture while positioning itself as a software leader — and even provider — within the automotive industry. Rivian increased the size of the board and elected Gomez, whose term will expire in 2026, according to the filing. Gomez has had a long career as a data scientist and AI expert. He launched Cohere in 2019 with co-founders Nick Frosst and Ivan Zhang with a focus on training AI foundation models for enterprises. The generative AI startup sells its services to companies such as Oracle and Notion. Prior to starting Cohere, Gomez was a researcher at Google Brain, the deep learning division at Google led by Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton. Gomez is also known for "Attention Is All You Need," a 2017 technical paper he co-authored that laid the foundation for many of the most capable generative AI models today. Gomez's skillset could be particularly useful for Rivian as the EV maker navigates a new $5.8 billion joint venture with Volkswagen Group to develop software. Under the joint venture, Rivian will share its electrical architecture expertise with a Volkswagen Group — including its many brands — and is expected to license existing intellectual property rights to the joint venture. It's possible the joint venture will sell its tech to other companies in the future. Rivian has also been working on an AI assistant for its EVs since 2023, Rivian's chief software officer, Wassym Bensaid, told TechCrunch during an interview in March. The AI work, which is specifically on the orchestration layer or framework for an AI assistant, sits outside the joint venture with VW, Bensaid said at the time. Gomez's expertise in AI and as a data scientist is clearly attractive to Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe, who noted in a statement that his "thinking and expertise will support Rivian as we integrate new, cutting-edge technologies into our products, services and manufacturing." This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at Sign in to access your portfolio
