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.
herim@heraldcorp.com