Episode Overview

Podcast: Joe Rogan Experience for AI
Episode Title: Cohere Gets $100M, Partners with AMD
Date: September 27, 2025

This episode takes a deep dive into Cohere’s recent fundraising success, its strategic partnership with AMD, and how it fits into the broader landscape of AI companies. The host analyzes Cohere’s growth trajectory, its positioning in the AI race versus giants like OpenAI, Nvidia, and Anthropic, and discusses its focus on enterprises, technology, and what the future might hold.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Cohere’s Funding and Valuation

• Record-Setting Raise:
  • Recent achievements: Cohere closed an additional $100 million round, following an oversubscribed $500 million round in August, bringing their total raise to around $600 million and a new valuation between $6.8–$7 billion (00:33).
  • Oversubscription highlights strong investor appetite: "It seems like, you know, they had a lot of appetite. They raised at a 6.8 billion valuation, oversubscribed to 500 million. And then it seems like they're like, all right, there's still a lot of demand. We'll go and take in another $100 million." (02:00)
  • New investors: Business Development Bank of Canada and Nexus Capital Management joined in this round (11:20).

2. Cohere’s AMD Partnership

• Strategic Technology Alignment:
  • Cohere announced a new partnership with AMD, allowing their AI models to run natively on AMD’s Instinct GPUs, marking a significant technical and business shift.
  • Contrast with OpenAI and Nvidia: "Cohere has actually just signed a deal with AMD, one of Nvidia's big competitors, and it's also one of their investors." (03:21)
  • Incentives behind hardware alliances: "…making it specifically so you can run this on AMD's Instinct GPU, AMD is happy and they're going to invest money into your company the same way that...Nvidia basically gives money to every major AI startup..." (04:10)

3. Cohere’s Product Focus and Differentiation

• Enterprise-Centric Approach:
  • "They're specifically building AI models for the enterprise." (01:31)
  • Cohere’s suite includes command, vision, translation, and reasoning models—all optimized for AMD hardware.
  • Emphasis on AI sovereignty: "It markets itself basically to enterprises where AI sovereignty is really urgent. So, you know, local control of your data and models." (10:59)
• Comparison with OpenAI & Anthropic:
  • Cohere is often overshadowed by OpenAI (valued at $500 billion) and Anthropic (recently valued at $183 billion after a $13 billion raise).
  • "If you said that like 10 years ago, people would have been like, there's no way. Like, that's incredible. That's an amazing company. But I think Cohere definitely gets really overshadowed by just how fast OpenAI is growing." (07:13)
  • Despite raising substantial capital, it "feels perhaps like smaller" due to these behemoth valuations, but is still a remarkable feat for a six-year-old company.

4. Unique Market Position—Strengths and Challenges

• Canadian Roots and Specialization:

  • Cohere is a Canadian startup with co-founder Aidan Gomez, known for co-authoring the seminal “Attention Is All You Need” Transformers paper (06:45).

• Customer Base and Growth:

  • "It's addressing a very specific market. It's serving their customers. Their customers are very happy with what they're doing and they...are still growing and raising a lot of money." (12:03)
  • There’s discussion on whether Cohere should broaden its focus to attract more general users, or stick to highly regulated, “high concern” industries (e.g., healthcare, legal).

• Visibility and Usage:

  • "Cohere could probably do a lot better job of putting a push and being more visible. It's just not a brand you see out there a lot." (13:40)
  • On usage metrics: "Cohere is not incredibly popular on our platform. Not a lot of people use it…they have a lot of specific like use cases where you might be running this locally on your own hardware for different high, you know, high concern industries like legal or healthcare." (14:10)

5. Competitive Outlook and Suggestions

• Calls for Product Verticalization:

  • The host suggests Cohere could drive growth by tailoring its models to vertical-specific needs, much like Anthropic’s success with Claude code for developers (15:20).

• Potential for Broader Adoption:

  • "I think there's demand for more alternatives and more competition…if they kind of focus on a specific vertical of user and made their model better…they could see a lot of growth." (15:54)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Valuation Boom:
  • “Zero to $7 billion valuation in six years. That is absolutely insane in my opinion.” (07:08)
• On Investor Satisfaction:
  • “Investors are happy, they’re getting a great return and their customers are happy. They’re, you know, getting a lot of value out of it.” (12:41)
• On Industry Overshadowing:
  • “Cohere definitely gets really overshadowed by just how fast OpenAI is growing.” (07:22)
• On Moving Beyond Enterprise:
  • “Cohere could probably do a lot better job of putting a push and being more visible. It’s just not a brand you see out there a lot.” (13:43)
• On not Counting Cohere Out:
  • “At the end of the day, do not count Cohere out. They're still alive and kicking... $600 million is impressive in the last little bit.” (17:25)

Important Timestamps

• 00:33: Breakdown of Cohere’s raise and valuation details
• 03:21: Announcement and impact of AMD partnership
• 06:45: Cohere’s early role in the AI model race and founder’s credentials
• 07:13: Reflections on Cohere’s place in the AI startup hierarchy
• 10:59: Discussion of enterprise focus and AI sovereignty
• 12:03: Host shares industry investor opinions on Cohere’s strategic path
• 13:40: Discussion on Cohere’s brand visibility and platform usage
• 15:20: Suggestions for product verticalization and strategy
• 17:25: Parting thoughts—Cohere’s staying power and future outlook

Summary

This episode offers a detailed analysis of Cohere’s big moves: a significant new funding round, strategic partnership with AMD, and its evolving positioning in the AI industry dominated by goliaths like OpenAI, Nvidia, and Anthropic. The host explores the unique challenges and opportunities for a firm determined to maintain relevance amid billion-dollar fundraising rounds, emphasizing Cohere’s enterprise focus, technical leadership, and potential areas for strategic expansion. With candid reflections, industry comparisons, and a clear call for broader adoption, the episode presents Cohere as a resilient, evolving player worth watching in the ever-intensifying AI race.