Cohere Opens Ottawa Office to Chase C$240M Federal AI Deals
Canada's lone frontier model lab plants a flag in the capital, bringing engineers and solutions architects within walking distance of its biggest customer: the federal government.
- Cohere is opening its first Ottawa office near Lansdowne Park, adding to Toronto and Montreal sites.
- Company employs 800+ globally, with roughly 30 staff already in the Ottawa region.
- Move follows an MOU with the federal government and a $240M compute commitment from Ottawa.
- Shared Services Canada licensed Command A for CANChat, used by 11,500 public servants across 20 departments.
- Up to 1,400 ISED employees are getting Cohere's North platform for drafting and task automation.
- Cohere is reportedly raising $2B to $3B at a $20B valuation, a record for a Canadian startup.
Cohere is opening its first Ottawa office on Bank Street near Lansdowne Park, giving the Toronto-based AI company a local base for its growing federal business. The company announcement describes Ottawa as Cohere’s fourth Canadian location, adding to operations that include Toronto and Montreal. Cohere employs more than 800 people worldwide, including nearly 30 already based in the national capital region.
Federal deployments drive the move
Cohere’s federal work now spans a C$339,000 software licence, a deployment for up to 1,400 departmental users, a broader agreement on government AI and an earlier C$240 million commitment toward the company’s computing needs.
| Customer or program | Scope | Reported amount |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Services Canada | One-year Command A licence for CANChat, with about 11,500 employees registered across 20 departments | C$339,000 |
| Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada | North access for up to 1,400 users, covering search, summarization, drafting, decision support and task automation | Not disclosed |
| Federal compute support | Earlier commitment toward Cohere’s processing capacity | C$240 million |
Command A is Cohere’s large language model for enterprise workloads. North is a secure workplace platform that connects models to an organization’s data and tools, allowing employees to search internal material, generate drafts and automate multistep tasks.
A federal agreement established a framework for exploring Cohere’s technology in government operations. Federal deployments typically require procurement reviews, security assessments, data-residency controls and integration with identity and records systems. Ottawa-based engineers, solution architects and public-sector staff can handle that work alongside the departments deploying the products.
A US$20 billion valuation in play
Cohere is reportedly negotiating a US$2 billion to US$3 billion financing at a US$20 billion valuation. Those terms would nearly triple the US$7 billion valuation it reached in September 2025 and produce the largest reported funding round for a private Canadian startup. German conglomerate Schwarz Group plans to invest US$600 million through its Schwarz Digits technology arm.
The company’s reported annual recurring revenue has reached roughly US$240 million, up from about US$100 million a year earlier. ARR annualizes the current value of recurring contracts. Cohere’s customer list includes Oracle, RBC, Bell, Dell and Saudi telecom operator stc.
The build requirements behind the contracts
- Design for jurisdictional control. Sovereign AI keeps models, data and infrastructure under a customer’s chosen legal and operational jurisdiction. Deployment plans need explicit terms for hosting, data residency, encryption keys, model updates and administrator access.
- Expose governance controls. Regulated customers evaluate role-based access, audit logs, retention policies, citations, evaluation records and incident handling alongside model quality.
- Make retrieval permission-aware. North depends on access to internal content, so its search and generation layers must preserve the permissions attached to each source document.
- Plan for phased procurement. A cross-government licence and a department-level rollout can have different buyers, security reviews and success measures. Pilots need clear paths to production, support and renewal.
- Measure use after registration. CANChat’s 11,500 figure counts sign-ups. Active users, repeat use, task completion, output quality, time saved and security incidents provide stronger evidence of adoption.
- Staff implementation locally. Cohere is recruiting software engineers to build public-sector agents and North features, as well as solution architects with government experience and, preferably, security clearance. Agents are workflows that let a model call tools and complete multistep tasks.
The next Ottawa metrics
Renewal of the one-year CANChat licence, active-use figures, expansion beyond the current 20 departments, the disclosed value of the ISED deployment and growth in security-cleared hiring will indicate whether Cohere’s early federal access develops into sustained production use.
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