Cohere has raised $500 million at a $6.8 billion valuation and appointed Joelle Pineau, former VP of AI Research at Meta, as its first Chief AI Officer. Pineau, a leading Canadian AI scientist and McGill professor, is best known for co-leading the development of Meta’s open Llama models and overseeing the FAIR lab for nearly eight years.
Her appointment signals a strategic push to strengthen Cohere’s research pipeline, product innovation, and talent acquisition, with a focus on North, the company’s private AI agent platform for enterprises and government agencies handling sensitive data. Cohere, competing with OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic, is doubling down on privacy-first, enterprise-grade AI rather than AGI.
Pineau’s hire follows the departure of VP of AI Research Sara Hooker. She aims to build on Cohere’s technical foundation, guide applied research toward real-world deployments, and expand its AI team in a market where top talent is in high demand. The company is positioning itself to deliver secure, high-performance AI solutions while operating with greater agility than its much larger rivals.
