Canadian artificial intelligence startup Cohere announced on Thursday the completion of a new $500 million funding round, bringing the company's valuation to $6.8 billion.

The funding round was led by Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital, with participation from existing investors including AMD Ventures, NVIDIA, PSP Investments, and Salesforce Ventures.

Unlike most AI companies such as OpenAI that focus on broad foundational models, Cohere develops AI models specifically designed for enterprise applications.

"This funding enables us to expand globally, extend into different modalities—as you've seen with our recent launch of a command vision model—and continue building secure AI for enterprises," said Nick Frost, co-founder of Cohere, in an interview.

The company also announced key executive appointments, naming former Meta Platforms, Inc. AI research vice president Joelle Pineau as Chief AI Officer and former Uber executive Francois Chadwick as Chief Financial Officer.

Pineau spent eight years at Meta Platforms, Inc., leading the company's fundamental AI research group since 2023. She departed from Meta Platforms, Inc. in May of this year, at a time when the tech giant was actively investing in and building new AI research teams.