Canada is to take an equity stake of up to C$1.6 billion (about US$1.1 billion) in Cohere, the Toronto-based artificial intelligence company, in one of the largest state investments yet in a domestic AI champion.
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the commitment on Thursday in Montreal, at the opening of the Canada–European Union Summit. The investment will be made in stages through the Canada Development Investment Corporation, a federal Crown corporation, alongside private investors including Nvidia, Bell and Germany’s Schwarz Group. Ottawa said the money is a commercial investment, with regular reporting on progress against Cohere’s commitments.
The conditions attached are explicit. Cohere must keep its incorporation and headquarters in Canada, invest at least C$1.7 billion in new computing infrastructure in the country by 2030, create at least 1,000 new high-paying technical jobs by the same date, build research partnerships with Canadian institutions, and keep working with the Canadian AI Safety Institute.
The government money sits inside Cohere’s Series E funding round, which is targeting up to C$7 billion at a post-money valuation of about C$35.7 billion — which would make it the largest private financing ever raised by a Canadian technology company. The round, led by Schwarz Group, has completed an initial close; the full target is not yet money in the bank. It follows an earlier C$240 million federal commitment to Cohere under Canada’s 2024 Sovereign AI Compute Strategy.
Founded in Toronto in 2019, Cohere builds AI models for businesses and governments rather than consumer chatbots. In May it agreed to acquire the German AI firm Aleph Alpha, creating a combined company with dual headquarters in Toronto and Berlin, in a deal backed by both the Canadian and German governments. Chief executive Aidan Gomez called the federal investment “a huge honour” and described Cohere as “the largest AI company outside the United States and China”.
Carney framed the deal as a matter of sovereignty as much as economics, saying Canada is “not waiting for the future of AI to be decided somewhere else” — a pointed reference to the dominance of American and Chinese labs in advanced AI.
Sources: Prime Minister of Canada, “Canada announces landmark investment in Cohere to scale secure, sovereign AI”, 29 October 2026 (https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/10/29/canada-announces-landmark-investment-cohere-scale-secure-sovereign-ai); Reuters reporting on the Series E round; CBC News.
