Salesforce, Nvidia, Cisco Invest In AI Startup Cohere At $5B Valuation 鈥� Report

Toronto-based locked up a $450 million investment from big-named corporate investors at a $5 billion valuation, per a .

Investors in the round included chip giant , 听1 and , as well as Canadian pension fund . The investment is expected to be only the first tranche in the round as Cohere continues fundraising, per the report.

The new valuation is more than double Cohere鈥檚 previous value. The company raised a $270 million Series C led by at a valuation of $2.2 billion last June. Investors in the round included Nvidia, , Salesforce Ventures, and 鈥� as well as financial institutions and VC firms , , and .

Cohere builds large language models that allow AI to learn from new data, and can be customized and put into applications for features such as interactive chat or to generate text.

Valuations increasing

Of course valuation jumps for AI startups is nothing new. In early May, AI cloud infrastructure startup locked up a $1.1 billion round led by that values the company at $19 billion, The new value represented an almost threefold increase from the company鈥檚 valuation just five months ago, when it was valued at $7 billion following a secondary sale.

Also in May, it was that Paris-based 鈥� a competitor to and 鈥� was closing in on a round of about $600 million from existing investors and that would value it at $6 billion. That would triple Mistral鈥檚 value from just last December when it raised approximately $415 million at a $2 billion valuation, per a .

Finally, just last week 鈥檚 generative AI startup, , officially announced its long-awaited fundraise 鈥� a $6 billion round that included investment from , , , , Management & Research Co., Prince and , among others. The new funding values the 10-month-old company at $24 billion post money, making it the second-most-valuable generative AI company in the world behind only competitor .

More AI

Cisco and its investment arm, , weren鈥檛 done making news on Tuesday.

It also announced the launch of a $1 billion AI investment fund 鈥渢o bolster the startup ecosystem and expand the development of secure and reliable AI solutions.鈥�

As part of the announcement, Cisco said it had made strategic investments in Cohere, Mistral AI and in previously announced rounds, and has already committed nearly $200 million of the investment fund to date.

In previous years, Cisco made over 20 AI-focused acquisitions and investments, the company said in a .