STARTUPS

Cohere Acquires Ottogrid as AI Startup Sharpens Focus on Enterprise Tools

AI startup Cohere strengthens market research capabilities with acquisition of Vancouver-based Ottogrid.

By Donna Joseph
May 20, 2025 4:42 AM Updated May 20, 2025
Cohere Acquires Ottogrid as AI Startup Sharpens Focus on Enterprise Tools Photo by SBR

TORONTO, May 19, 2025Cohere has acquired Ottogrid, a Vancouver-based startup that builds AI-powered enterprise tools, as part of a broader push to strengthen its offering for corporate clients.

The deal was announced Friday by Ottogrid co-founder Sully Omar in a post on X. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Ottogrid will shut down its standalone product but will give users adequate notice and a transition period, according to Omar.

“We’re excited to join the Cohere team and impact how people automate workflows and scale operations,” Omar said in a statement.

Cohere did not respond to a request for comment.

The acquisition comes as Cohere adjusts its business trajectory. The Toronto-based company reportedly missed its 2023 revenue targets by 85 percent, according to The Information. However, it told Reuters last week that its annualized revenue has now reached $100 million, following a shift in strategy toward private AI deployments for industries such as finance, healthcare and government.

Founded in 2023 as Cognosys by Omar and Homam Malkawi, Ottogrid rebranded in late 2024 with a redesigned interface and an expanded suite of integrations and APIs. The company enables users to extract and enrich structured data from unstructured sources—such as websites or PDFs—and save that information directly into spreadsheets or lead-generation tools.

Before the acquisition, Ottogrid had raised $2 million in seed funding from investors including GV (Google Ventures), Untapped Capital, Replit CEO Amjad Masad, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, and Cohere co-founders Ivan Zhang and Aidan Gomez, according to Crunchbase.

Ottogrid will now concentrate its efforts on supporting North, Cohere’s ChatGPT-style enterprise product designed for knowledge workers. North provides tools for summarizing documents, extracting insights, and automating research-intensive workflows.

We’re excited to join the Cohere team and impact how people automate workflows and scale operations.


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