Cohere leans into sovereign demand

Cohere is pitching control as the selling point for artificial intelligence, saying South Korean companies want workplace assistants that meet local rules and stay governable. Chief executive Aidan Gomez said Korean demand for enterprise AI assistants is strong, and tied that demand to “control towers” and other systems that fit local requirements, according to an April 15 interview published by The Asia Business Daily. Cohere has already been building in Seoul since 2025. The company said on July 14, 2025 that it would open a Seoul office as its Asia-Pacific hub and expand work with LG CNS, including an artificial intelligence diplomatic security data platform for South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Cohere also hired former Confluent executive Andrew Chang as vice president for Asia-Pacific. Cohere’s pitch is aimed at companies and governments that do not want sensitive data flowing into a generic public chatbot. Its products are built for enterprises, and its North platform, launched in 2025, is marketed as a workplace system that can automate tasks while staying grounded in a customer’s own data. That same argument now overlaps with politics. On April 15, Cohere chief artificial intelligence officer Joelle Pineau said the company would “always remain headquartered” in Canada, after reports that Cohere and Germany’s Aleph Alpha were discussing a merger. Reuters, citing Handelsblatt on April 10, reported that the two companies were in talks and that Berlin backed a potential deal. BetaKit reported that Cohere declined to comment on “market rumours or speculation,” even as Pineau publicly stressed that Canada would remain its home base. The Korean push and the Canada message fit the same strategy: sell artificial intelligence as infrastructure that can be placed inside a country’s legal and technical boundaries. In February, SAP and Cohere said they would launch sovereign AI systems starting in Canada, with data kept secure within Canada for public-sector and regulated customers. South Korea has already been a test case for that model. LG CNS said in May 2025 that it had built a Korean-focused 7 billion-parameter model with Cohere and was targeting financial-services and public-sector clients that wanted a more secure and cheaper option than larger global models. Cohere’s own corporate page now lists Toronto as its origin and Seoul among its global offices. The company is trying to show customers that “local” can mean two things at once: local deployment for clients, and a fixed national home for the company itself.