Aidan Gomez

Aidan Gomez studied computer science and mathematics at the University of Toronto, then began a PhD in computer science at Oxford, which he paused to build Cohere and completed in 2024.

At 20, while interning at Google Brain, he was one of eight authors of “Attention Is All You Need” – the 2017 paper that introduced the Transformer architecture and became the technical foundation of almost every large language model built since, Cohere’s included. Aidan did not arrive at AI as an outsider: he helped invent the architecture the industry now runs on.

That same year he co-founded FOR.ai, a distributed research community built around collaborative machine-learning work, later revived as Cohere For AI and now Cohere Labs – the group behind open research projects including the multilingual model Aya. Organising researchers around a hard technical problem was not new to him by the time he started a company.

He left Google in 2019 to co-found Cohere with fellow researchers Ivan Zhang and Nick Frosst, building the company around the transformer architecture he had helped develop. He has led the company as CEO since, and was named to Time’s 2023 100/AI list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence.

Beyond Cohere, Aidan is a recurring presence in the policy debate on AI. He joined global leaders and executives at the G7 summit in June 2026, has appeared at the Rome Conference on AI, Ethics and Governance, one of Europe’s principal gatherings on the subject, and at AI House Davos, arguing in each for technological sovereignty among democratic nations.

Cohere builds large language models for enterprises in regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, manufacturing, energy and the public sector, and stays away from consumer products like ChatGPT. It reported $240 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025, and after raising $500 million in August 2025 and a further $100 million in September, it reached a reported valuation of about $7 billion.

On 16 September 2026, Cohere entered into a merger agreement with Aleph Alpha, the German AI company that now serves as its bridge between Canada and Europe. The combined company will operate under the Cohere name and retain its chief executive, while gaining the European base that sovereign AI requires. The combined group will operate with dual headquarters in Toronto and Berlin, a research centre in Heidelberg, and more than 1,000 staff across North America and Europe. The two companies describe it as the first transatlantic sovereign AI solution.

Alongside the combination, Cohere has now announced the initial close of its Series E financing round, targeting up to CAD 7 billion (approximately USD 5 billion) at a valuation of CAD 35.7 billion (approximately USD 25.5 billion). The round is led by Schwarz Group, which had previously committed USD 600 million in structured financing, with participation from new investors including Bell Ventures, Bullhound Capital and the Government of Canada, alongside returning investors NVIDIA, Inovia Capital and Prosperity7 Ventures. The combination with Aleph Alpha remains subject to final regulatory approvals.

Aidan measures the value of generative AI by the productivity it delivers. Independent research from MIT and Harvard shows real gains once knowledge workers are trained to use these models. His case for enterprise AI rests on speed as a competitive advantage. He points to insurance underwriting, where a company using Cohere’s models to draft faster quotes can out-compete rivals simply by responding first.

This view of AI as an execution edge has shaped Cohere’s focus on regulated, high-stakes industries, where being first and being right both carry a price. For Aidan, success means adoption in sectors once thought to be AI-resistant, such as natural-resource insurers and industrial manufacturers.

EXEP is the only investor in Italy with exposure to Cohere.

EXEP first invested in Cohere’s Series D in July 2025. Nine months later, in April 2026, Cohere announced its combination with Aleph Alpha. In September 2026, we reinforced our position in the Series E, reflecting our view that Cohere’s growth trajectory remains at an early stage. On 29 October 2026, Cohere announced the initial close of its Series E, targeting up to CAD 7 billion at a valuation of CAD 35.7 billion (approximately $25.5 billion post-money).

Our conviction rests on two pillars: the founder and the sovereign AI opportunity. As a co-author of the architecture underpinning modern AI, Aidan Gomez brings technical credibility that few founders can match. He has built on it with a disciplined commercial strategy, deliberately prioritising regulated, high-stakes enterprise clients over consumer reach and industry headlines. This combination of research depth and execution focus is rare in the sector. Sovereign AI is where that strategy now leads. Governments and regulated industries increasingly require AI they can own and control, independent of US providers, and the combination with Aleph Alpha positions Cohere as the leading transatlantic provider in this market. We believe Aidan is uniquely placed to lead this transition, and EXEP offers Italian investors exclusive access to it.

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