AI Startup Cohere Valued at $5.5 Billion In New Funding Round

Artificial intelligence startup Cohere Inc. is now one of the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence companies, and one of the largest startups in Canada — but unlike some of its Silicon Valley competitors, it’s not particularly flashy.

In a new funding round, Cohere was valued at $5.5 billion, vaulting it to the upper echelons of global startups. It landed there without a consumer app that writes poems, draws pictures or helps with homework.

Instead, Toronto-based Cohere makes large language models — software trained on massive swaths of the internet to analyze and generate text — and customizes them for businesses. Its software has attracted hundreds ...