The Canadian AI company Cohere has announced the acquisition of Reliant AI, a start-up specializing in the biopharmaceutical industry with locations in Berlin and Montreal. The acquisition is part of a growing expansion strategy by Cohere in the area of so-called “Sovereign AI” — AI solutions in which companies and governments retain full control over their data, infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.

Founders with Google and DeepMind Backgrounds

Reliant AI was founded in 2023 by Karl Moritz Hermann, Richard Schlegel, and Marc G. Bellemare. Hermann and Bellemare bring years of experience from leading AI research labs: Hermann previously worked at Google, among others, while Bellemare holds a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Mila Institute in Montreal. The company had recently closed a seed funding round of $11.3 million, led by iNovia Ventures and Tola Capital.

Reliant AI’s core product is an intelligent research platform that helps pharmaceutical companies automate systematic literature reviews, competitive analysis, and the extraction of unstructured scientific and regulatory data. The platform also enables the rapid identification of therapeutic precedents and the modeling of market opportunities.

Strategic Integration into Cohere’s Product Portfolio

Cohere plans to integrate Reliant AI’s technology into a new product called “North for Pharma,” an agentic AI system for teams in the biopharmaceutical industry working in research and development, clinical development, and scientific analytics. The product complements Cohere’s existing industry-specific solutions for the financial and telecommunications sectors.

As part of the acquisition, Karl Moritz Hermann will join Cohere as Vice President of AI Verticalizations and will continue to be based in Berlin. Marc Bellemare will take on the role of Vice President of Modelling, based in Montreal. Cohere will also assume Reliant AI’s existing customer relationships, including companies such as GSK, Medicus Pharma, and Kyowa Kirin.

“We are delighted to welcome the Reliant AI team to Cohere. Healthcare and biopharma demand secure, sovereign, and domain-specific systems. Together, we will accelerate progress in these critical sectors,” says Aidan Gomez, Co-Founder and CEO of Cohere.

Second Acquisition in Germany Within a Short Space of Time

The acquisition of Reliant AI is not Cohere’s first purchase with a German connection. The company had previously acquired Aleph Alpha, a German AI company regarded as one of the most prominent European projects in the field of sovereign AI, which was also strongly focused on deployment in regulated environments. With both acquisitions, Cohere is deliberately expanding its presence in Europe and positioning itself as a provider for companies and government agencies that depend on privacy-compliant AI infrastructure.

Cohere emphasizes that the need for AI solutions guaranteeing complete data sovereignty is particularly high in highly regulated industries such as healthcare. With its growing portfolio of industry-specific products and the reinforcement provided by specialized research teams from Europe, the company aims to meet this demand.