Cohere Signs Definitive Agreement to Combine With Aleph Alpha

Cohere announced the signing of a definitive business combination agreement with Aleph Alpha on September 16, 2026, formalizing a partnership the two artificial intelligence developers first disclosed in April. The unified company will operate globally under the Cohere name and, in the company’s characterization, will effectively create the first transatlantic sovereign AI solution.

The transaction remains subject to final regulatory approvals. Cohere said the deal is expected to close later in 2026, with further integration and product details to follow.

Cohere said the transaction will increase its employee headcount to more than 1,000 across both continents, with plans for the combined company to be dual-headquartered in Berlin and Toronto and to keep Aleph Alpha’s Heidelberg office as a research center. The company said it will remain deeply rooted in both countries, with headquarters, R&D centers, and leadership roles in Canada and Germany, and that the combination brings together research expertise, enterprise-grade solutions, and long-standing public sector partnerships across Canada and Europe.

Leadership Appointments at Close

Cohere will expand its leadership team with two senior appointments effective upon deal close. Ilhan Scheer, currently co-CEO of Aleph Alpha, will become chief operating officer of Cohere, leading the company’s global operating model and organizational scaling. Scheer previously founded fable+, a data analytics and transformation company acquired by Accenture, where he went on to serve as managing director overseeing a global portfolio of enterprise transformation products, and he is co-author of Decision Intelligence (Wiley).

“Over the past twelve months, we have sharpened our focus on specialized language models for governments and regulated industries,” Scheer said. “Cohere is a strong strategic fit for this work, bringing global reach and deployment capabilities that complement our research expertise.”

Samuel Weinbach, co-founder and co-chief research officer of Aleph Alpha, will become chief research officer of Cohere, advancing the company’s research and technological development. His scientific work spans tokenization, language model training, explainability, and image generation. Both appointments are contingent on completion of the transaction.

Cohere said it will become the first foundational model developer anchored on both sides of the Atlantic to deliver AI solutions aligned with the sovereignty requirements of both Canada and Germany. The company said the combined company will operate within the applicable legal and regulatory frameworks of both jurisdictions, including requirements governing the protection and handling of sensitive data and technology, and that its structure incorporates safeguards and oversight mechanisms that reinforce operational control, accountability, and compliance across both markets.

“No government or enterprise should have to choose between capable AI and control over their technology,” said Aidan Gomez, Cohere’s co-founder and CEO. Gomez said the companies are joining forces to enhance the talent, infrastructure, and institutional trust behind Cohere’s mission.

The combined company will also advance its partnership with the companies of Schwarz Group to deliver sovereign AI on STACKIT, which Cohere describes as Schwarz Digits’ sovereign cloud service and a cornerstone of Europe’s digital sovereignty strategy. Christian Müller, CEO of Schwarz Digits, said the alliance has the goal of establishing STACKIT as the technical backbone for sovereign AI solutions, so that organizations do not have to choose between high performance and digital independence.

April Partnership and Series E Financing

Cohere and Aleph Alpha first announced their planned partnership on April 24, 2026, describing a transatlantic alliance that would combine Cohere’s global AI scale with Aleph Alpha’s research excellence and deep institutional relationships. In that announcement, the companies said pooling engineering talent and computational resources across two G7 nations would accelerate the development of next-generation frontier models and systems while providing a secure alternative to dependence on any single vendor or infrastructure stack. The April post said the combined entity aimed to deliver a secure alternative for customized AI in highly regulated sectors, naming the public sector, finance, defense, energy, manufacturing, telecommunications, and healthcare.

The April announcement also disclosed that the companies of Schwarz Group intended to back Cohere’s upcoming Series E funding as lead investor with a $600 million (€500 million) structured financing commitment. In a joint statement at the time, Schwarz Digits co-CEOs Rolf Schumann and Christian Müller said the investment positions the Schwarz Group companies as lead investors for digital sovereignty and infrastructure, and they described the establishment of STACKIT as the technical backbone of the transatlantic AI initiative.

The April post cited a March 2026 McKinsey projection that the market for AI services will surpass $1 trillion annually, with sovereign AI needs representing nearly $600 billion of that total.