Cohere Hires Former Meta AI Research Head as Chief AI OfficerCohere Hires Former Meta AI Research Head as Chief AI Officer -- Pure AI

Cohere Hires Former Meta AI Research Head as Chief AI OfficerCohere Hires Former Meta AI Research Head as Chief AI Officer

By John K. Waters
08/26/2025

Canadian AI startup Cohere has appointed Joelle Pineau, former head of Meta's AI research division, as its first chief AI officer, the company announced this week alongside a $500 million funding round that values the firm at $6.8 billion.

Pineau, who left Meta in May after nearly eight years, previously oversaw the social media giant's Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) labs and helped develop Meta's early Llama language models. In her new role, she will lead AI strategy across Cohere's research, product development, and policy teams, based in Montreal.

The hiring comes as Cohere seeks to strengthen its position against competitors, including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. While those rivals pursue artificial general intelligence, Cohere focuses on enterprise applications, building AI tools for businesses and government agencies with an emphasis on privacy and security.

"A lot of players out there are quite singularly focused on AGI, superintelligence, and so on," Pineau said in an interview. "They haven't necessarily figured out what this AI is going to be used for."

Pineau's appointment follows the departure of Cohere's VP of AI Research, Sara Hooker, who announced her exit this week. The move also comes amid intense competition for AI talent, with tech giants offering compensation packages exceeding $100 million for top researchers.

Founded in 2019 by former Google researchers, Cohere has raised $1.5 billion to date. The company's latest product, North, is an AI agent platform that enterprises can deploy on private infrastructure. Major clients include Dell, Oracle, Fujitsu, and Royal Bank of Canada.

Despite its high valuation, Cohere has struggled to match the technical performance of leading AI models. The company's flagship Command R+ model ranked 37th in quality benchmarks last year, according to industry assessments.

Cohere reported annualized revenue growth from $13 million to $35 million between December 2023 and March 2024, with 85% of business coming from private sector contracts. The company has expanded from 250 to 400 employees over the past year.

"Cohere is grounded by a deeply technical team, building state-of-the-art models at the frontier," said Jordan Jacobs of Radical Ventures, which co-led the funding round.

Pineau said she chose Cohere over other offers due to its focus on practical business applications and responsible AI development. She will also oversee Cohere Labs, the company's non-profit research arm that collaborates with external researchers.

About the Author

John K. Waters is the editor in chief of a number of Converge360.com sites, with a focus on high-end development, AI and future tech. He's been writing about cutting-edge technologies and culture of Silicon Valley for more than two decades, and he's written more than a dozen books. He also co-scripted the documentary film Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, which aired on PBS. He can be reached at [email protected].