Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez believes the Toronto-based artificial intelligence (AI) scaleup could hit the public markets “soon.”
Aidan Gomez,
“I think public market investors would be excited to have a pure-play AI investment opportunity, as opposed to investing by proxy through hyperscalers.”
Cohere
Gomez made the comment while breaking down his company’s place in the AI market with Bloomberg’s Lynn Doan at the Bloomberg Tech conference in London this week. On stage, Gomez told Doan that he believes his company will become profitable before 2029.
“We have a differentiated deployment model, we have very high margins similar to a traditional [software-as-a-service] business, whereas many others in the industry are losing money per customer,” Gomez said. “We feel [we are] in a very good position to build a sustainable, profit-generating business.”
Gomez initially told Doan that he didn’t know when his company would hold an initial public offering (IPO), adding, while holding up crossed fingers, that he doesn’t “want to jinx” the potential IPO.
“I think [we’ll IPO] soon,” Gomez said, returning to formality. “We’re on a clear path to profitability; I think public market investors would be excited to have a pure-play AI investment opportunity, as opposed to investing by proxy through hyperscalers.”
When prodded by Doan, Gomez said he would entertain an offer to list on a UK stock exchange, particularly since the Canadian-born entrepreneur lives in the country, where his mother is from. However, he noted that the “core constraint” is access to capital.
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“If that [capital] exists, we’ll be rational economic actors and list wherever,” Gomez said.
Founded in 2019 by former Google researchers, Cohere builds the large-language models (LLMs) that power chatbots and other AI applications for companies and government agencies. Cohere has raised $600 million USD from investors in recent months, achieving a valuation of $7 billion USD.
The IPO chatter follows Cohere opening a secondary sale this week for its employees to sell their company shares. Secondaries have become an increasingly popular means of generating liquidity for shareholders amid a lack of distributions from exits like IPOs. The company has also recently added former Uber executive Francois Chadwick as its first-ever CFO. He served as the rideshare company’s acting CFO and played a leadership role during the firm’s IPO.
The on-stage conversation also revealed that Cohere has reached $150 million USD in annual recurring revenue, up from the $100 million reported in May. Cohere is on track to bring in $200 million in revenue this year, a source familiar with the company’s operations previously told BetaKit.
Gomez also highlighted the work the Canadian AI darling has done over the past year to grow outside of the United States, including new offices and partnerships. Gomez said the moves have eliminated Cohere’s dependence on the US as a primary source of revenue (80 percent last year), with most money now coming from other countries.
Feature image courtesy Toronto Tech Week.