Cohere and Bell team up to sell AI tools to Canadian governments and firms

TORONTO — Cohere and telecom giant Bell have announced a partnership to work together selling AI tools to businesses and governments across Canada. 

Under the deal, announced Monday, Cohere will provide access to its large language models (LLMs) and North agent-builder system that will be hosted on Bell’s compute infrastructure in Canada. The telecom firm will also use Cohere’s products internally, and its technology consulting arm will help businesses adopt the tools. 

Canadian businesses “know they need to adopt AI” and want to do it in a “fully sovereign” way, Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez told The Logic. Cohere and Bell will work together to customize AI systems for large clients, and create a technology package that’s easy for smaller firms to buy and use. 

The partnership gives Montreal-based Bell a use for some of the capacity of the new data centres it’s building. It will also let the firm offer clients more complete generative AI services. “We want to be the backbone of Canada’s AI ecosystem,” said Bell CEO Mirko Bibic. 

To capitalize on growing demand, Bell recently announced that it was getting back into the data centre business, with plans to build six new facilities in British Columbia over several years. The compute capacity it’s bringing online has been selling fast, Bibic said. Bell also recently combined its consulting teams into a single unit, Ateko, with a focus on AI. To expand its capabilities, Bibic said it wanted to partner with the leading enterprise AI firm, adding that it’s a “great bonus” that Cohere is Canadian.

For Cohere, meanwhile, the deal adds a major Canadian client, and expands its distribution network in the country. The Toronto-based firm already has partnerships with professional services firms like McKinsey, Accenture and Fujitsu to build applications powered by its LLMs for their clients. Cohere also has a deal with Dell, which lets businesses buy servers pre-loaded with North. 

Before the Bell partnership was announced, Cohere’s most prominent Canadian customer was RBC; the two firms are co-developing a version of North tailored for the banking sector. 

Both firms hope to capitalize on economic patriotism from businesses and governments in Canada in the face of the ongoing trade dispute with the U.S. “You can’t build Canada unless you make massive investments in digital infrastructure,” Bibic said, citing wireless and fibre networks, hardware infrastructure and AI systems. 

Cohere has historically found it harder to sell its technology to Canadian firms than those overseas. Last February, Cohere president Martin Kon specifically cited the telecom sector, claiming the firm had fielded calls from the likes of Deutsche Telecom, Verizon and Vodafone, but not Canadian carriers. 

Gomez told The Logic that initial lack of interest was “on Cohere” as the company was “a tiny startup a year ago.” The firm has since improved its technology and grown its operations, and business in Canada has picked up, Gomez added. “The broader Team Canada effort is really fueling that domestic adoption.” 

Bibic said the partnership got a helping hand from federal AI Minister Evan Solomon, with whom he met shortly after announcing Bell’s AI plans in May. “He said, ‘We need to get more Canadian companies working together,’” Bibic said of Solomon. Teams at Cohere and Bell had already been in contact, but the deal accelerated after direct talks involving Bibic, Gomez, Kon and Bell Business Markets president John Watson.

As part of the partnership, Bell will become Cohere’s first-choice compute infrastructure provider in Canada. Cohere will both train and run its AI models at Bell’s data centres, on chips made by Silicon Valley startup Groq. Canada was “caught flat footed—the country does not have enough sovereign compute capacity,” Gomez said, adding that the new partnership will help fill the gap. 

The AI firm will also soon start using a new data centre in Cambridge, Ont. that U.S. cloud firm CoreWeave is scheduled to bring online next month. Ottawa’s Strategic Innovation Fund is providing Cohere with $240 million in federal funding to help pay for its compute spending

Last month, Cohere announced it’s working with the federal government to deploy AI in its operations. The public sector is “not a huge piece” of the company’s business right nowGomez said, but the firm wants to be part of efforts to shore up Canada’s national security and productivity. Bell is already one of Ottawa’s largest suppliers, selling departments hundreds of millions worth of IT, telephone and professional services each year. 

Both Cohere and Bell tout the security and reliability of their technology as key selling points. Cohere focuses on regulated industries in which users may need to store and process their data in specific ways to comply with rules, while Bell is targeting organizations that want to ensure their information stays within Canada. 

Bell is already “quite a sophisticated user of AI,” Bibic said, but the technology has been limited to specialized staff and areas of the business. Employees across the firm will now have access to AI tools via Cohere’s North, which it hopes will improve customer service and productivity. Bibic said he’s encouraging all staff to learn about and adopt AI.

Update: Comments from Bell CEO Mirko Bibic and Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez have been added.