Cohere, ChatGPT is made in Canada and wants to change the world of work

“We’re a pretty big player,” Nick Frost says with a smile. The young company he co-founded in 2020 is today a multinational corporation valued at more than $2 billion. Which is enough to allow Cohere to establish itself as a serious competitor to OpenAI – the US company behind ChatGPT.

Mr. Frost doesn’t take offense when comparing Cohere to OpenAI. We use the same technology“, he explains from his company’s offices. The atmosphere is relaxed: employees wear slippers and dogs are allowed. It feels like San Francisco, but Cohere’s headquarters are in Toronto.

Like OpenAI, Cohere has created a chatbot – or chatbot – which uses large linguistic models to answer its users’ questions.

But unlike ChatGPT, Coral ( chatbot by Cohere) is not intended for the general public. Instead, the young photographer chose to target companies Solve problems specific to the world of work The president said. Cohere now has hundreds of customers around the world, including giants like Oracle, Spotify, and McKenzie.

I think a similar shift happened when companies realized they needed to create websites or apps for smartphones.

A personal robot… and a secret one

Unlike ChatGPT, Coral doesn’t just search for answers on the Internet. The software can be integrated directly into its clients’ servers, allowing the creation of personalized responses while ensuring data confidentiality.

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If this technology is to be useful, it must have access to the same information as company employees [documents internes, bases de données, courriels, etc.]“, explains Nick Frost. The businessman says he used Coral to obtain the Wi-Fi password for Cohere’s London offices during a recent business trip.

Coral can also be used to summarize documents, classify data, sort resumes, write computer code, or moderate comments. In other words, automate tasks Boring and repetitive Everyday life, sums up Mr. Frost, who believes his technology will profoundly change the world of work without eliminating jobs.

industrial Revolution

Jordan Jacobs was the first investor in Coher. We wrote them a check on day one“, says the co-founder of Radical Ventures. The Torontonian has been drawn to the fields of artificial intelligence for years. In 2017, he launched a venture capital firm to identify and fund promising startups.

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It’s very rare that we come across something so small, an idea so small, that can become a company the size of Google. This is the case of Cohersays Jordan, who doesn’t hesitate to compare AI to the Industrial Revolution or the invention of electricity.

Toronto talent

In addition to being Canadian, all three of Cohere’s founders attended the University of Toronto. Nick Frost and Aidan Gomes worked in the laboratory of Professor Geoffrey Hinton, who is often described as Founding father of Amnesty International. Many of his students became stars in Silicon Valley.

One of the reasons that prompted researchers [comme Geoffrey Hinton] They came to Canada because their research was funded by agencies such as the Canadian Institute for Advanced Researchconfirms Jordan, who hopes that Canada will continue to occupy a leadership position in the field of artificial intelligence.

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