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Cohere
makes Seoul APAC base for sovereign AI push
By Jo He-rim, The Korea Herald - Cohere
will establish a standalone legal entity as its Asia-Pacific headquarters in
Seoul as it expands operations and handles rising sovereign AI needs in the
region, the Canadian AI startup said Wednesday.
In a press conference in Seoul, Cohere
announced it will expand its APAC business fourfold by the end of 2027.
"Korea is one of the most dynamic
competitive markets in the world, and we believe expanding our solution here in
Korea would be a great test case to be able to expand it throughout all of
APEC," Cohere Chief Revenue Officer Frank O'Dowd said. "There's
nothing more important to us than this market."
Cohere, founded in 2019 by Aidan Gomez
and other former Google researchers behind the "Attention is All You
Need" paper develops enterprise AI software that runs across public
clouds, on-premises and private data centers. "Attention is All You
Need" introduced the transformer architecture underlying all modern large
language models
The approach appeals to regulated
industries — banks, pharma firms and government agencies — seeking complete
control over their AI infrastructure and data without relying on centralized
cloud platforms, according to the CRO.
The company offers North, an "agent
foundry" for deploying production-grade AI agents; Compass, a search
engine model; and Command A, its foundational model. Cohere plans to release
Command A Plus by the end of this year, featuring 1 trillion parameters, as it
continues scaling its capabilities.
O'Dowd said Cohere has doubled its APAC
team over the past 12 months since opening in Seoul, while customer numbers
increased fivefold. The company plans to double its regional team again by
year-end, with new offices launching in Korea and Japan and expanded public
sector support in Singapore.
Chang Hwa-jin, Cohere's Asia Pacific
vice president, said the Seoul office will launch within about three months,
with plans to hire local engineers and sales staff to build the team to
double-digit headcount.
In Korea, Cohere has secured an
exclusive partnership with LG CNS to develop custom AI models optimized for
target industries, combining LG's domain expertise with Cohere's secure AI
agents platform. The collaboration aims to help Korean enterprises boost productivity
and efficiency through tailored AI solutions.
Beyond this flagship partnership, Cohere
plans to expand partnerships with additional companies and government bodies in
Korea, while also targeting growth in Australia, India, Japan, Singapore and
Taiwan, the executives said.
Market tracker IDC expects 80 percent of
APAC enterprises to prioritize AI sovereignty for mission-critical workloads,
while sovereign AI has become the region's second-highest government investment
priority. McKinsey forecasts the sovereign AI market to grow from $150 billion
to $600 billion within four years, underscoring the region's strategic shift
toward data control and localized infrastructure.
