Temur Durrani

This is a thoughtful piece. I'm genuinely happy for Cohere that they're growing and scaling, but I will admit I've been asking myself a lot of bigger picture questions since this was announced, starting with: what problem does this solve? Cohere isn't short of capital. Schwarz, Nvidia and Aramco invested. And the $1.68B announced comes after $240M in federal compute funding and stakes from PSP, EDC and BDC in earlier funding rounds. So if it's not capital, what is the goal? The AI minister himself was quoted in a Betakit article saying the stake gives Ottawa "a seat at the table to control" this technology. What does that mean? What are the terms of the deal? Is the intent here really for the Government of Canada to control the technology that Cohere is developing? I think Canadians deserve to know what kind of control is contemplated. Beyond this specific deal, the bigger picture points to an evolving pattern in Canada’s industrial policy. Equity stakes in private companies have historically only been taken by the Government of Canada in times of crisis to rescue strategically important companies. Most lost taxpayers money, e.g. GM, Trans Mountain, de Havilland. Cohere isn't in crisis, which makes this feel like a new policy direction, not a rescue. $1.6B in Cohere. A $500M tech fund built to take equity in tech companies. A $1.75B government VC plan. A proposed sovereign wealth fund. Canada Growth Fund. On top of EDC and BDC and our pension funds which have a mandate to invest public dollars. Ottawa is becoming the owner, the funder, the customer and the regulator of the same companies. That trend towards state-led capitalism is hard to reverse and Canadians should be asking questions abut the long term implications of that direction on our economic competitiveness. Big picture: Canada wins when markets reward builders, not when ministers pick them. The better path we might consider is focusing on making Canada the best place in the world to build and scale. Competitive taxes. Faster approvals. Real AI adoption. We should be focusing on ensuring our most successful companies won't need a federal cheque to stay.