Toronto-based Cohere is the highest-ranking Canadian startup in Bessemer Venture Partners’ list of top 100 “deep technology” companies.
Cohere, a competitor of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, is one of four Canadian companies included in the first edition of this list, ranking 41st place overall. It joins Vancouver startup Nexii (48th), Burnaby’s Svante Technologies (54th), and fellow Toronto firm Xanadu (92nd).
Oracle announced a partnership with Cohere following its $270-million USD Series C round last week.
Bessemer created the “XB100” list in partnership with XPRIZE, a non-profit foundation that hosts public competitions meant to encourage technological development to benefit humanity.
This list is meant to highlight the most promising startups developing “deep technologies,” which Bessemer refers to as “technology that was science fiction in the past but is reality today; it pushes the boundaries of human capability through novel research and directed commercialization.”
Deep tech, or deep technology, refers to companies with a business model based on high-tech innovation or significant scientific advances. It often includes artificial intelligence, robotics, blockchain, biotech, and quantum computing.
Founded in 2019, Cohere helps developers and businesses build products with natural language processing (NLP) technology. Its large-language models can be used to power interactive chat features, generate text for product descriptions, and perform content moderation, among other functions.
With its generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, Cohere competes against players like Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google-funded Anthropic, which each closed major funding rounds this year. For its part, Cohere recently secured $270-million USD in Series C funding.
Cohere raised its Series C round from a group of investors that include some of the world’s largest tech firms, such as Nvidia, Oracle, and Salesforce Ventures.
Following the raise, Oracle announced a partnership with Cohere to develop generative AI services for organizations.
RELATED: Cohere announces $270-million USD Series C from Inovia, Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce
Other Canadian startups included in the list have also raised sizable funding rounds in the past year.
Nexii, which designs and manufactures low-carbon buildings and products, raised $45 million CAD in July 2022, which raised the startup’s valuation to $2 billion CAD.
Towards the end of last year, in December, carbon-capture tech provider Svante raised a $318-million Series E round with Chevron’s clean energy division, Chevron New Energies, as its lead investor.
Quantum computing company Xanadu announced the closing of a $100-million Series C round in November 2022. That raise brought Xanadu’s valuation to $1 billion USD, making it Canada’s latest unicorn at that time.
Featured image courtesy Cohere.
