Fujitsu Invests in AI Startup to Develop Enterprise AI Models

Fujitsu is partnering with AI startup Cohere to develop enterprise-grade large language models for Japanese businesses.

Under the partnership, the companies will work on a language model tentatively named Takane which will be offered to businesses for use in private cloud environments.

Takane will be based on Cohere’s flagship Command R+ model, which can handle lengthy text inputs and work with retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to power AI agent applications.

Users can apply Takane to the specific needs of their industry and business while ensuring all data is kept secure.

The model will be offered through Fujitsu’s cloud-based AI platform, Kozuchi. An official release is set for September.

In addition, Fujitsu and Cohere will jointly build a knowledge graph extended RAG tool into the Kozuchi platform, as well as a generative AI-powered auditing tool.

“Fujitsu has developed a knowledge graph extended RAG technology for logical inferences and a generative AI amalgamation technology for automatic generation of specialized generative AI models to meet the diverse needs of companies,” said Vivek Mahajan, Fujitsu’s chief technology officer and chief product officer. “Combining these with Cohere's latest highly secure enterprise large language models, we aim to provide businesses with powerful and adaptable AI solutions that address specific needs and accelerate the adoption of generative AI globally.”

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Fujitsu also announced it has made a “significant investment” in the startup.

Fujitsu will become the exclusive provider of any jointly developed services, with the Japanese company planning to offer co-developed models through its cloud-based Data Intelligence PaaS service and Uvance platform. It joins previous backers Nvidia and Oracle. 

In January, the Canadian-based startup was in talks to raise up to $1 billion.

Unlike OpenAI, Cohere’s AI efforts focus solely on enterprises, building custom applications for businesses using their data.

The startup was founded by former Google scientists Aidan Gomez and Nick Frosst, along with Ivan Zhang. Gomez co-authored the famous seminal paper on Transformers that has revolutionized large language models, while Frosst worked at Google Brain under Turing award winner Geoffrey Hinton.

“We believe that this strategic partnership with Fujitsu is a truly important step in offering world-class LLM capabilities to one of the most important enterprise markets in the world,” said Gomez. “For AI technologies to reach their full potential, we need to be able to meet enterprises where they are, whether that means in their own cloud environment, or in the languages that they do business. “We are incredibly excited that our work with Fujitsu will help to unlock the enormous potential of Cohere’s technology to power the next generation of Japanese businesses.”

Related:AI Startup Roundup: OpenAI Rival Cohere in Talks to Raise $1 Billion