The latest model Command R+ from Cohere has surpassed GPT-4 on the Arena leaderboard and is now available on HuggingChat.
Unlike OpenAI, Cohere focuses on enterprise rather than providing conversational chatbots for consumers. "We don't and never will have money-burning consumer chatbots," said Martin Kon, COO of Cohere.
Cohere offers three types of models: Embed, Command, and Rerank. Each category serves specific use cases and can be customized according to specific needs.
The latest model Command R+ from Cohere will soon be available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Microsoft Azure. It is worth noting that this will be the first time Cohere models are available on any cloud platform other than OCI.
Oracle's Favorite
The relationship between Cohere and Oracle is different from that of OpenAI-Microsoft. Gomez stated that Cohere is independent of any cloud service provider, allowing its models to be deployed on any cloud platform, unlike OpenAI, which is limited to Microsoft Azure.
"We believe independence is crucial, so our models can be used on every cloud platform you know—Azure, GCP, OCI, AWS—as well as on-premises deployments. You won't be locked into one stack or one cloud platform," Gomez said during the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos.
"We haven't received massive funding from a single cloud service provider, which could lock us into one ecosystem or environment. We're really working hard to stay independent and build something new for the world," he added, indirectly mocking OpenAI.
Kon expressed a similar view, stating that models need to be cloud-agnostic so they can be deployed wherever data security is ensured, without being constrained by a specific cloud or even on-premises deployment.
Although Gomez stated that Cohere is independent, its relationship with Oracle is close. Cohere trains and builds its generative AI models on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), which provides high-performance, cost-effective GPU cluster technology. This enables Cohere to accelerate LLM training while reducing costs.
"The impact of the relationship with Oracle is significant, not only in terms of computing and providing the best supercomputers in the world but also in jointly exploring markets, creating new products, transforming existing products, and bringing this technology to enterprises," Gomez said.
"OCI's generative AI services truly fulfill our mission of building large-scale language models for enterprises while highly protecting their data, ensuring complete security," Gomez added.
Cohere's generative AI models have been integrated into Oracle's business applications, including Oracle Fusion Cloud, Oracle NetSuite, and Oracle's industry-specific applications.
Oracle recently added generative AI capabilities to its Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite, which includes applications designed to manage various aspects of a company, including finance, human resources, supply chain, sales, marketing, and customer service.
Will Oracle Acquire Cohere?
Recently, this competitor of OpenAI has been discussing raising $500 million at a valuation of around $5 billion. In June last year, Cohere's valuation reached $2.2 billion after a $270 million funding round involving investors such as Inovia Capital, NVIDIA, and Oracle.
Cohere has been striving to generate substantial revenue. The company's annualized revenue at the end of last year was approximately $130 million, with monthly revenue slightly exceeding $1 million. Meanwhile, OpenAI reached the $2 billion revenue milestone in December 2023.
Cohere's revenue is far lower than that of its competitors. However, the startup has informed investors that the value of its sales pipeline, including potential contracts expected to be completed by the end of 2024, exceeds $300 million. It is currently unclear what share Oracle holds in this pipeline.
On the other hand, Oracle achieved $13.3 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2024, a 7% year-on-year growth. It also signed a significant second-generation cloud infrastructure contract with NVIDIA.
"Oracle's second-generation AI infrastructure business is thriving. That's clear to everyone," said Larry Ellison, Oracle's CTO, during an earnings conference call.
"In addition to selling infrastructure for training large-scale AI language models, Oracle is also completely transforming its industry-specific applications to take full advantage of generative AI," he added.
Oracle has developed a clinical digital assistant for doctors, which will be delivered in the fourth quarter. It can automatically generate doctor's notes and update electronic health records.
Ellison also stated that Oracle is building the world's largest data center. "We're building an AI data center in the United States where you can park eight Boeing 747 airplanes end-to-end inside the data center. We're building a lot of data centers," he said.
"We're building 20 data centers for Microsoft and Azure. They ordered three more data centers this quarter... and there are other multicloud agreements being signed," he added.
If this AI startup struggles to generate substantial revenue, it would not be surprising for Oracle to consider acquiring Cohere in the future. However, Cohere's decision to deploy its models on Microsoft Azure may open up new revenue streams.
