Aug 14 (Reuters) - Cohere was valued at $6.8 billion

after its latest $500 million funding round, as the artificial

intelligence startup moves to expand its market share in a

highly competitive industry.

The funding round was led by Radical Ventures and Inovia

Capital, with participation from existing investors AMD

Ventures, NVIDIA, PSP Investments, and Salesforce Ventures,

among others.

Unlike most AI companies like OpenAI and Meta's

Llama, which are focused on broad foundational models, Cohere

builds enterprise-specific AI models.

In January, it launched North, a ChatGPT-style tool designed

to help knowledge workers with tasks such as document

summarization.

The company said it will use the new funding to advance

agentic AI that can help businesses and governments operate more

efficiently.

Alongside the fundraise, Cohere appointed Joelle Pineau,

former Vice President of AI Research at Meta, as Chief AI

Officer, and Francois Chadwick, former CFO at Uber and Shield

AI, as Chief Financial Officer.

The fundraise comes amid a broader surge in AI financing, as

private equity and Big Tech channel capital into startups in

pursuit of strong returns from innovative AI products.