Cohere to set up Korean subsidiary due to fastest client growth in region
The Toronto-based AI firm said Korea is driving nearly half of its Asia Pacific customer growth as it prepares to open a subsidiary in the country later this year.
From left, Frank O'Dowd, Cohere's chief revenue and commercial officer, and Andrew Chang, vice president of the Asia Pacific region, answers questions from the Korean press at The Westin Josun Seoul in central Seoul on Aug. 5.
COHERE
Cohere, a Toronto-based AI company, will establish a Korean subsidiary sometime in the second half of this year, as the country is showing the fastest client growth out of any market in the Asia Pacific region.
The company laid out its strategy Tuesday during a press conference in central Seoul, where executives described Korea as central to its regional growth.
Cohere's customer base across the Asia Pacific region has grown roughly fivefold over the past year, and nearly half of that growth has come from Korea, according to Andrew Chang, the company's vice president of Asia Pacific.
“We expect another three-fold surge in our customer count by the end of next year, with Korea again accounting for close to half of the increase,” Chang said.
Korea has the most Cohere employees among the company's offices in the region, Chang said, adding that the country will keep growing the fastest and post the highest customer numbers in Asia Pacific.
Incorporation of the Korean entity is already underway and is expected to take about three months. Chang added that Cohere has not yet named a country manager, and that he has been filling the role himself in the interim while based in Korea.
Korea has been on a mission to develop homegrown AI models to reduce its dependence on foreign technology, working from a concept of sovereign AI that refers to a country's capacity to develop, own and control its own AI infrastructure without relying on foreign providers.
Cohere argues its definition differs, since it gives customers complete control over the model rather than requiring the technology itself to be domestically built.
“Once our models are deployed on-premise, we have no physical way to shut them down,” Chang said. “Once deployed, we have no visibility into what data is running through the model, how the agentic AI platform is being used or how agents are configured — unless a customer specifically asks for our help.”
Cohere has worked with local partners including LG CNS since before establishing a presence in Korea, co-developing a Korean-language model and integrating its agentic AI platform with LG's internal tools. The company is also hiring engineers in Korea to help customers build and deploy AI agents on-site.
BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]
