Cohere and Aleph Alpha lock in a transatlantic sovereign AI merger
Canada's Cohere and Germany's Aleph Alpha signed a definitive business combination agreement on September 16, months after announcing the plan in April. The combined company will operate as Cohere with dual headquarters in Toronto and Berlin. Earlier reports put the deal around a $20 billion valuation, with Schwarz Group investing €500 million and pledging major StackIT compute.
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AIKey facts
- Status
- Definitive agreement signed Sep 16, 2026; first announced April; close later this year pending regulators
- Brand and HQs
- Operates as Cohere; dual HQ Toronto and Berlin; Heidelberg remains a research center
- Leadership
- Ilhan Scheer to become COO; Samuel Weinbach to become Chief Research Officer
- Capital and compute
- Earlier ~$20B combined valuation; Schwarz Group €500M equity; StackIT compute partnership (Reuters cites large German campus investment)
Cohere and Aleph Alpha said on September 16, 2026, that they had signed a definitive agreement to combine their businesses. The proposed company would operate as Cohere, with headquarters in Toronto and Berlin, and position itself as a transatlantic supplier of sovereign AI. The deal is still subject to regulatory approval and has not closed.
Sovereignty becomes a company structure
The companies announced a plan to join forces in April. Signing an agreement moves that plan forward, but it does not settle how the two product portfolios will fit together. Cohere says the combined organization will have more than 1,000 employees across Canada and Europe and retain Aleph Alpha’s Heidelberg office as a research center.
The pitch is aimed at governments and regulated businesses that want AI systems they can deploy under local rules and within their own infrastructure. Cohere markets private and on-premises options. Aleph Alpha has focused on specialized models for public-sector and enterprise work. Both are making control over data and deployment part of the product, rather than treating it as a contract detail.
Cohere co-founder Aidan Gomez would remain chief executive. Aleph Alpha co-CEO Ilhan Scheer is slated to become chief operating officer, and Aleph Alpha co-founder Samuel Weinbach chief research officer. The appointments depend on the transaction closing, which the companies expect later in 2026.
The cloud underneath the promise
Cohere also highlighted its partnership with the companies of Schwarz Group. Their STACKIT service, operated by Schwarz Digits, is intended to provide a sovereign European cloud route for the combined offering. That gives the merger an infrastructure story as well as a model and sales story: buyers can ask not only who trained a system, but where it runs and under whose jurisdiction.
Reuters reported a €500 million investment by Schwarz Group in the combined entity. The companies’ September announcement did not provide updated deal valuation or other full financial terms, so earlier estimates of the combined company’s worth remain estimates. Those distinctions matter for a proposed merger still awaiting approvals.
Two headquarters, one unresolved product
A Toronto-Berlin headquarters arrangement is unusual for an AI model developer. It signals that the combined company wants to be treated as locally accountable on both sides of the Atlantic, not simply as a Canadian vendor exporting software to Europe. That may appeal to public agencies, banks and large enterprises with strict procurement rules.
The difficult work begins after approval. The companies still have to reconcile research programs, deployment tooling and customer contracts without turning sovereignty into a confusing collection of regional exceptions. The signed agreement makes their ambition concrete. It does not yet prove that one product can satisfy two jurisdictions at scale.
