Cohere Opens Ottawa Office Near Lansdowne as It Courts Federal Buyers
Cohere is opening an office in Ottawa, its third in Canada after Toronto and Montréal, putting the Toronto-based AI company close to the federal customers it has spent the past year courting. The company announced the move on Thursday, BetaKit reported. The space sits next to Lansdowne Park in the Glebe neighbourhood and will be used by the nearly 30 Cohere employees who already work in the Ottawa region in go-to-market, engineering, infrastructure and security roles.
Cohere did not give a hiring target. A spokesperson told BetaKit the company will “tap into Ottawa’s strong talent pool as it expands its footprint,” and public job postings show openings for forward-deployed engineers who can be based in the city, the hands-on staff who install and tune AI systems inside a client’s own environment. Cohere has more than 800 employees across offices in Toronto, Montréal, New York, London and San Francisco.
Yasir Naqvi, the Member of Parliament for Ottawa Centre, welcomed the move in a statement. “Ottawa is key to Canada’s AI ecosystem, connecting Canadian AI innovators with key decision-makers and policy experts, namely within the Government of Canada,” he said, adding that the office would “reaffirm Ottawa’s role as a point of collaboration.”
What it means in practice
The office is a physical bet on a strategy Cohere has pursued for months: selling itself as a sovereign and secure option for governments and regulated industries. The company signed a memorandum of understanding with the federal government last year to explore AI uses in the public service, and it holds a contract with the Communications Security Establishment. Quebec, for its part, has signed an exploratory deal to test Cohere in its public service. The company also bought the naming rights to Ottawa’s Capital Exhibition Centre, now known as the Cohere Centre.
Defence is the other draw. Ottawa is growing as a defence sector hub, and this week Cohere deepened its partnership with Thales to bring its agentic AI to the Canadian Armed Forces for naval and maritime support. Having engineers near departments and defence firms matters because secure deployments often run on government-controlled infrastructure, where vendors need to work closely with in-house teams. The move follows the launch earlier this month of the North 2 agent platform and a PwC alliance.
What to watch: how many new roles Cohere fills in Ottawa, whether the federal memorandum turns into paid contracts across departments, and how quickly the Thales work moves from partnership to deployment on Canadian ships.