Investing in Cohere Stock | How to Buy Pre-IPO Shares (2025)

Cohere operates as a leading enterprise-grade AI systems provider. The company offers several LLMs (Large Language Models) to the market. These models enable developers to create and integrate accurate and efficient AI options that enable humans and machines to interact in a streamlined manner. As such, demand for Cohere shares continues to rise alongside growing demand for AI services.

Obtaining Cohere shares isn't as easy as going to your stock trading app and making a purchase. Cohere is a privately held company, meaning that you will need to obtain pre-IPO shares to gain any ownership stake in the company. Notably, the firm hasn’t announced plans to go public yet, so pre-IPO shares are the best option. Here's what you need to know.

What is Cohere?

Cohere is an AI research, development, and service provider. The company entered the market in 2019 and was founded by a team of engineers who worked closely with Google Brain. Specifically, Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, and Nick Frost created Cohere to provide enhanced LLM services to enterprise-level clientele. Today, the company is well recognized, with offices in Toronto, San Francisco, Palo Alto, London, and New York City.

Source – Cohere Homepage

Cohere continues to innovate the AI sector via its LLMs and latest advancements. The company's data security-focused AI offers developers flexible and secure deployment solutions that can run on the cloud or on in-house servers. In most instances, integration only requires a few lines of code.

Cohere offers high-performance, industry-leading LLMs and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) services that leverage Transformer architecture, enabling seamless interaction between clients and business assets. These models range in their capabilities and use case scenarios.

Command R

Command R is Cohere's premier LLM. This advanced algorithm was trained on supercomputers to provide unmatched security alongside scalability and performance requirements. One of the main advantages of Command R is that it was programmed using international business language, making it ideal for use by conglomerates and other companies with international clientele, seeking to integrate advanced AI solutions like chatbots.

Embed

Embed is a powerful RAG that enhances customer queries, enabling faster results and smoother interactions. The intelligent retrieval engine for semantic search was designed to filter out noise, which can often lead to inaccurate results. To accomplish this task, the AI utilizes search-by-meaning rather than simply looking at the text. This approach allows users to get enhanced results.

Embed also enables developers and business owners to gather a lot of data from their clients to improve their offerings., For example, you can use Embed to discover patterns. This feature enables business owners to see the most commonly asked questions, what issues they revolve around, and any correlated searches that may not seem directly related.

ReRank

ReRank is another popular AI offering that has helped Cohere secure a top spot in the market. This advanced AI algorithm leverages “Elastic Search” to improve response times. ReRank enables clients to find products faster, improving your website response time and providing a semantic boost to quality.

Historical Funding Rounds

Summary of Cohere Funding:

• Total Funding: Cohere secured $970M across 5 funding rounds
• Largest Round: Cohere largest funding round secured $500M  on Jun 04, 2024.
• Investors: A total of 24 institutional investors and 4 Angel investors back Cohere
• Latest Round: The latest funding round raised  $500M and was a Series D round held on Jun 04, 2024.

Funding Rounds Breakdown:

• 2 Early-Stage
• 2 Late-Stage

Key Investors:

Cohere has several key investors, including Cisco, PSP Investments, NVIDIA, Salesforce Ventures, Fujitsu, AMD, Export Development Canada, Inovia Capital, Oracle, NVIDIA, Index Ventures, DTCP, Mirae, Asset, Schroders, SentinelOne, Thomvest Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Radical Ventures, Index Ventures, S32, Geoffrey Hinton, Pieter Abbeel, Raquel Urtasun, Fei-Fei Li, and S3.2.

Funding Info Sourced from Tracxn

Why Invest in Cohere?

There are several reasons why traders continue to seek out Cohere shares. For one, the company is a leading ML/AI research provider. Their studies and LLMs have helped to push the entire AI industry forward, enhancing capabilities and providing new use case scenarios for the tech. Additionally, the company was created by some of the most experienced AI engineers in the world.

Cohere has taken a different approach from competitors like ChatGPT. For example, it hasn’t offered a public chatbot window. Instead, the company focused on enterprise-level clients and developers. This strategy has helped it to carve out a niche in the fast-moving market. It has also assisted the company in securing strategic partnerships with some of the largest names in tech.

Cohere has industry leaders excited, including leaders in AI like NVIDIA (NVDA +1.02%), who have decided to invest in the firm due to its unique products and advanced offerings. These investments help to build market confidence further and enhance the firm's ability to recruit top-tier talent to improve their products.

Those seeking to enter the AI market should review Cohere as its positioning and business model give it an edge in terms of stability and future growth. When you combine these factors with the company's unique products, expert leadership, and continuing pioneering research, it's easy to see why so many investors are eager for the company to host an IPO.

How to Buy Cohere Pre-IPO Shares

Cohere remains a privately held company, meaning that you will need to utilize a specialized approach to get access to shares. Here is what you need to consider.

1. Pre-IPO Secondary Marketplace

Investors sometimes gain exposure to private companies through secondary marketplaces, which connect accredited investors with early shareholders—such as employees, venture firms, or insiders—looking to sell shares before a company’s IPO.

Pre-IPO investments offer the chance to invest during a company's high-growth phase, often at lower valuations than in the public markets. However, these opportunities come with important considerations:

• Eligibility: Secondary markets typically require you to be an accredited investor, meaning you must meet certain income or net worth thresholds.

• Liquidity Risk: Private shares are usually illiquid until the company goes public or is acquired, meaning you may need to hold them for several years—or potentially indefinitely.

If you meet the requirements and are comfortable with the risks, several platforms offer access to pre-IPO opportunities:

• Forge Global: One of the largest private stock marketplaces, offering shares in late-stage startups like SpaceX, Stripe, and Databricks. Minimums typically start around $100,000.

• EquityZen: A popular platform allowing accredited investors to buy into private companies with minimums as low as $5,000. Past offerings include companies like Discord and UiPath.

• Rainmaker Securities: A full-service broker that helps source and negotiate private share sales, including opportunities in companies like OpenAI, Stripe, and Palantir.

• Hiive: A newer platform with live bid/ask pricing for hundreds of private companies. Transparent and low-fee, with minimums starting around $25,000.

• MicroVentures: Offers pooled access to late-stage companies through special purpose vehicles (SPVs), including past investments in SpaceX and Instacart.

• EquityBee: Allows investors to fund employee stock option exercises at startups, often at discounted valuations, with minimums around $10,000.

• Augment: A digital-first marketplace showing real-time pricing for pre-IPO shares, targeting tech-savvy investors and offering lower transaction fees.

• StartEngine Private: Launched in late 2023, this platform offers accredited investors access to Regulation D offerings in later-stage, venture-backed companies. In its first nine months, it generated $16.5 million in revenue, with average investments around $32,000

Important: Always perform thorough due diligence and consult a financial advisor before investing in private company shares.

2. Private Equity Firms

Private equity firms gain access to pre-IPO shares during investment rounds. They then offer these shares to high-net-worth accredited investors with a commission. Notably, private equity firms are known to have extra stipulations, including blocking the sale of shares for years in some cases.

3. Employee Equity Sales

Many consider employee equity sales as the best way to acquire pre-IPO shares in Cohere. This method of acquiring pre-IPO shares requires you to connect with former employees. It's common for companies to issue shares as part of an incentive package. Notably, this profit-sharing method has become more popular, leading to more pre-IPO share opportunities for investors.

Private Transactions: there are a lot of hoops you will need to jump through to complete a private pre-IPO transaction, including creating specific legal agreements, conducting valuations, and setting in place any limitations on the transfer of the asset.

Brokerage: Brokers will take a lot of the confusion out of the pre-IPO process. These professionals can guide you through each step, ensuring full compliance and avoiding common errors untrained professionals make.

There are several risks that you should consider before jumping into the pre-IPO shares investment arena. Here are the top concerns:

Liquidity Risk

If you are looking for an asset that you can sell right away, pre-IPO shares are not the best option. These investments can include sales and transfer clauses that prevent the transfer of the asset until certain criteria, such as the IPO's completion. It's even common for pre-IPO shares to require you to wait years before gaining the ability to sell your assets.

Regulatory Risk

The blockchain market has seen considerable scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers. While the technology is far better understood than in its early days, there are still many lawmakers who see it as a threat to the traditional financial system. As such, you need to always consider how new regulations could affect the value of your pre-IPO shares.

Market Risk

Purchasing pre-IPO shares in Cohere means that you stand behind the project and its team.  The company has secured a reputation for excellence and has previously expressed a desire to go public. However, no concrete data has been provided yet. As such, it's vital to understand that the blockchain market is an active space that experiences strong fluctuations that could result in a different share value between now and any future IPO launch.

Valuation of Cohere and Future IPO

Cohere received a valuation of $5.5B in 2024. With this valuation, the company qualifies as a Unicorn and is seen by many as one of the leading providers of AI solutions in the market. Cohere secured this spot through a combination of providing reliable and secure AI solutions, focusing on larger enterprise-level clientele, and remaining dedicated to expanding its AI model's capabilities, accessibility, and efficiency.

Cohere continues to receive accolades for its accomplishments in the industry. It has been featured in several high-level publications, including making the Forbes Cloud 100 and AI 50 lists this year. Each of these awards helped to raise awareness of the advancements the company continues to integrate.

Traders who can gain access to Cohere shares will open the door for future opportunities. Cohere hasn’t listed an IPO date yet. However, as a leading AI service provider, many believe a Cohere IPO would be a massive event that could be among the largest AI IPOs yet. As such, pre-IPO shareholders have opportunities.

Pre-IPO Cohere Shares Conclusion

Those who can access Cohere pre-IPO shares should consider the maneuver. Investing in pre-IPO shares opens the door for additional risk and reward exposure. In most instances, share prices will increase directly following an IPO announcement. As such, pre-IPO shareholders could benefit.

However, there are several factors you need to consider when investing in pre-IPO shares. For one, there's no guarantee that the company will operate in the same manner between your share purchase date and the IPO date. Additionally, pre-IPO shares have a lot of stipulations, like lock-up periods, that you need to consider to avoid unnecessary losses.

To protect your interests, you should always consult a financial professional. Together, you can review the company’s details and ensure that the investment does not surpass your risk appetite. For those who find pre-IPO shares of Cohere in their portfolio, there's a lot of opportunity on the horizon.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Pre-IPO shares are typically available only to accredited investors and carry significant risk. Always perform thorough due diligence and consult a financial advisor or legal expert before making investment decisions.