AI unicorn Cohere launches an employee stock transfer plan, providing a liquidity channel for its shareholders.

Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Cohere recently announced that it will launch an equity transfer plan for employees who are interested in selling their shares to external investors. The company, based in Toronto and San Francisco, recently completed a financing round with a valuation of $7 billion and received investment from NVIDIA Corporation. The company stated on Monday that it will provide existing employees with the opportunity to participate in this secondary sale, allowing them to realize their equity without having to wait for the company to go public or be acquired. The company also disclosed that its annual revenue has surpassed $1.5 billion (based on recent performance forecasts for the company's annual revenue), showing significant growth compared to $1 billion in May of this year. Founded in 2019, Cohere specializes in developing customizable AI software for enterprise customers (not individual consumers). The company's core differentiator is its focus on building highly secure data protection systems to ensure the security of sensitive customer data. However, this AI model developer is facing fierce competition from well-funded competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic, who are actively expanding into the enterprise market to offset the high costs of AI development and quickly validate their profit potential. To date, Cohere has raised approximately $1.6 billion in funding. In August of this year, led by Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital, with existing investors NVIDIA Corporation and AMD Ventures, the company completed a $500 million financing round. A month later, the company received an additional $100 million in funding through a second closing, bringing its valuation to around $7 billion. In terms of team building, Cohere recently welcomed two key executives to its team: Joelle Pineau, former AI research lead at Meta, has joined as Chief AI Officer; and Francois Chadwick, former executive at Uber Technologies, Inc., has been appointed as Chief Financial Officer.