Enterprise AI is evolving fast, and privacy and security have become not just buzzwords, but absolute requirements. Canadian AI startup Cohere is answering this call with the official rollout of its new platform, North. After months in early access, North is now generally available—and not just as another chatbot, but as a serious, enterprise-grade platform paving a new path for responsible, secure generative AI.
What Sets Cohere’s North Platform Apart from the Rest?
The headlines around AI usually spotlight the “big three”: Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI, and Google Vertex AI. But enterprise customers increasingly want more than just powerful language models—they want control, sovereignty, and bulletproof compliance. That’s where Cohere’s North steps in.
Private Deployment is North’s headline feature. Unlike traditional cloud-only solutions, North can sit on-premises, in a virtual private cloud, or in fully air-gapped environments. This means banks, hospitals, and government agencies can finally harness artificial intelligence (AI) without their data leaving their firewall. North is equipped with granular access controls, agent autonomy policies, continuous red-teaming, and third-party security audits that check all the compliance boxes: GDPR, SOC-2, ISO 27001, and more.
Nick Frosst, Cohere’s co-founder, nailed it at launch: “LLMs are only as good as the data they have access to”—and that access needs to happen within the customer’s environment, not someone else’s cloud.
How Does North Perform Against Industry Giants?
Cohere hasn’t just built a secure box for generative AI—their team claims to outperform established titans where it counts. Internal benchmarks show that North beats both Microsoft Copilot and Google Vertex AI in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) accuracy across key verticals such as finance, HR, customer support, and IT.
Underlying this is Cohere’s Compass technology, which supercharges North’s search and retrieval abilities. From there, businesses can spin up custom AI agents—virtual teammates that handle repetitive tasks, aggregate market research, interpret data, generate reports, and integrate with familiar office tools like Gmail, Slack, Salesforce, and Outlook.
Organizations like Royal Bank of Canada, Dell Technologies, LG CNS, Ensemble Health Partners, and Palantir are already putting North through its paces. RBC, for instance, is co-developing “North for Banking,” letting bankers chat with bespoke AI agents for everything from compliance answering to report drafting—all from within the bank’s controlled infrastructure.
Why Does Private Enterprise AI Matter in 2025?
Today’s biggest AI stories are about deepening trust and defensive innovation. AI adoption is a boardroom priority, but the risks of mishandling sensitive data—IP, financials, patient records—are existential for regulated industries.
This is Cohere’s edge: North is built for business—not for consumers, not for open chatbots, but for organizations that demand full control over their data, model usage, and agent behaviors. As more countries tighten their digital sovereignty laws and demand onshore, sovereign AI solutions, Cohere’s platform and recent Bell Canada partnership—making North part of Bell’s secure AI fabric for enterprise and government—couldn’t be better timed.
What’s Next for Cohere and the North Platform?
Cohere is riding a wave of momentum: annualized revenue leaped to $100 million in early 2025, with projections to hit $200 million by year-end. A massive $500 million Series D at a $5.5 billion valuation has set the foundation for increasing R&D and customer partnerships.
Looking ahead, as enterprise AI becomes less about shiny features and more about robust, responsible deployment, Cohere seems set to become the default choice for organizations that won’t compromise on privacy—even as the rest of the industry races to catch up.
If your organization is still wrestling with cloud risk versus AI productivity, the arrival of North signals you no longer have to choose. You can have both—security and performance—behind your own firewall.
