Cohere to Receive the 2025 Toronto Region Builder Award

Each year, at our much-anticipated Annual Dinner, Dare to Lead, presented by Odgers, the Toronto Region Board of Trade honours a member of our region’s vibrant business community who has built an inspirational legacy.

This year, at our 136th Annual Dinner, we are proud to recognize Cohere as the recipient of the 2025 Toronto Region Builder Award, presented by CPA Ontario.

“Cohere isn’t just building world-class AI – its building the future,” said Carol Wilding, President & CEO, CPA Ontario. “Cohere’s unwavering commitment to trustworthy innovation doesn’t simply set the standard, it embodies what it means to be a true region builder, serving as a model of vision, impact, and leadership for the entire Toronto region and beyond. We’re proud to honour Cohere for daring to lead with its bold, global vision.”

“In just a few short years, Cohere has catapulted itself to the front ranks of global enterprise AI, while firmly rooted here in the Toronto region,” said Giles Gherson, President & CEO, Toronto Region Board of Trade. “Cohere exemplifies the future of Toronto’s technology and AI-driven economy. Entrepreneurial, high-growth, and deeply proficient, in the AI-race, Cohere is Canada’s elite entrant in this Silicon Valley-dominated hypergrowth sector. Their leadership is shaping a new era of technological change, and we are honoured to recognize them as our 2026 Toronto Region Builder.”

A Toronto-Built Global Leader

Founded in Toronto, Cohere has quickly become a global force in artificial intelligence. While many AI companies focus on consumer applications, Cohere has carved a distinct path: building secure, privacy-first AI solutions for businesses and public institutions. Their models power essential tools such as search, translation, knowledge retrieval, and summarization — capabilities transforming operations across finance, healthcare, government, and advanced manufacturing.

What sets Cohere apart is its commitment to enterprise needs. Their technology is designed to run securely, protect sensitive information, and give organizations confidence in deploying AI at scale. As demand rises for responsible, trustworthy AI, Cohere’s leadership continues to draw international attention to the Toronto region as a global centre for innovation.

Three Founders Shaping the Future of AI

Cohere’s success reflects the vision and expertise of its three co-founders — Aidan Gomez, Nick Frosst, and Ivan Zhang — each emblematic of the Toronto region’s research strength and entrepreneurial spirit. Ivan will be receiving the award on behalf of all three founders at the Annual Dinner on February 26, 2026.

Aidan Gomez – Transforming AI on a Global Scale

Aidan’s groundbreaking work began at Google Brain, where he co-authored “Attention is All You Need,” the paper that introduced the Transformer architecture. This breakthrough reshaped the entire field of large language models and remains foundational to today’s AI systems. As Cohere’s CEO, he now leads the company from Toronto and London while bringing deep research insight to practical, enterprise-ready innovation.

Nick Frosst – Advancing Safe and Explainable AI

Nick worked alongside Geoffrey Hinton as the first employee at Google Brain’s Toronto lab. His research on capsule networks, adversarial examples, and explainability continues to inform Cohere’s focus on trusted, transparent AI. Based in Toronto, he champions local talent and remains an active contributor to the region’s innovation ecosystem, while also serving as the lead vocalist of the Toronto indie band Good Kid.

Ivan Zhang – Building Secure AI Infrastructure for the World

Ivan leads Cohere’s technical product development, ensuring AI systems meet the rigorous requirements of enterprise and government clients. Before co-founding Cohere, he created for.ai — now Cohere Labs — and worked across biotech and MLOps. His engineering leadership strengthens Cohere’s mission to build secure, reliable, and scalable AI infrastructure.

A Catalyst for Regional Growth

Cohere’s growth has brought high-quality jobs, global partnerships, and research investment to the Toronto region. Their presence strengthens the local innovation ecosystem and demonstrates how Toronto-built companies can scale globally while staying rooted here at home.

By exporting world-class AI talent and technology to the world, Cohere is helping drive economic opportunity across the region and inspiring the next generation of innovators.

Past Toronto Region Builder Award recipients include: