Baker McKenzie has advised Cohere on its business combination agreement with Aleph Alpha, a German artificial intelligence (AI) company headquartered in Heidelberg. The transaction remains subject to the required regulatory approvals.
The combined company, which will operate globally under the Cohere name, will bring together Aleph Alpha’s research expertise and specialized language models with Cohere’s enterprise AI solutions, global reach and implementation capabilities. This will create a transatlantic provider of sovereign AI dual-headquartered in Toronto and Berlin. Aleph Alpha’s Heidelberg office is expected to continue operating as a research center.
The combined company will operate within the applicable legal and regulatory frameworks of Canada and Germany. The deal also provides unique governance safeguards tied to digital sovereignty in both Canada and Germany.
“The deal is one of the most significant AI transactions in Germany, bringing together cutting-edge technological research and the ability to scale internationally. We are delighted to have advised Cohere on this strategically and regulatorily complex cross-border combination with a multidisciplinary team,” commented Dr. Tino Marz, lead partner at Baker McKenzie.
About Cohere
Cohere, founded in 2019, is the world's leading sovereign AI company building foundation models and end-to-end AI products to solve real-world business problems. Cohere partners with organizations to deliver seamless integration, deep customization, and user-friendly solutions. Cohere's all-in-one platform provides maximum security, privacy, and deployment flexibility across clouds, private on-premises environments, and even fully air-gapped settings. Headquartered globally in Toronto, San Francisco, and Germany, Cohere operates additional offices in London, New York, Montreal, Paris, and Seoul, serving customers worldwide.
The company has raised ~$1.6B USD from strategic tech investors (Nvidia, AMD Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Oracle, Cisco), institutional investors (Radical Ventures, Inovia Capital, PSP Investments, HOOPP, BDC, Nexxus), and AI pioneers including Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Pieter Abbeel, and Raquel Urtasun. For more information, visit cohere.com.
About Aleph Alpha
Aleph Alpha has been developing sovereign, human-centered AI and specialized language models for companies and public institutions since 2019. The Heidelberg-based company employs around 200 people across four locations in Germany.
Legal advisor to Cohere:
Baker McKenzie
Lead: Corporate/M&A: Dr. Tino Marz (partner, Munich)
Team: Corporate/M&A: Usman Sheikh (partner, Toronto), Julia Braun (partner, Munich), Dr. Jon Marcus Meese (senior counsel, Munich), Dr. Julia Rossie (counsel, Munich), Erik Kuhn, Tobias Beck, Dr. Jens Klapdor (all associates, Munich)
Employment: Dr. Steffen Scheuer, Christian Koops (both partners, Munich), Vanessa Bozic, Dr. Philipp Schlotthauer, Philipp Matzke, Dr. Anna Eschbaumer (all associates, Munich)
Data Privacy: Simone Rieken (partner, Frankfurt), Sebastian Schwiddessen (counsel, Berlin)
AI/Tech Regulation: Prof. Dr. Michael Schmidl (partner, Munich), Lennart Reich (senior associate, Munich), Dr. Katharina Theresia Fink (associate, Munich)
Intellectual Property: Dr. Markus Hecht (counsel, Frankfurt)
Tax: Thomas Gierath (partner, Munich), Ludmilla Maurer (counsel, Frankfurt)
Antitrust: Jan Kresken (partner, Düsseldorf)
FDI: Anahita Thoms (partner, Berlin), Valentin Wilhelm Weigel and Vanessa Wüstneck (both associates, Berlin)
Banking/Finance: Tim Hosgör (associate, Frankfurt)