Cohere is deepening its bet on Japan, announcing plans to establish a Japanese legal entity and expand its sovereign AI work in the country as Japanese organisations look for artificial intelligence they can run under their own control. The Canadian AI company announced the move on Thursday, 13 November 2026, alongside growing enterprise adoption of its models in Japan.

Sovereign AI — systems that keep data, models and infrastructure inside national borders and under local governance — has become a priority for Japanese enterprises and government bodies handling sensitive information. Cohere says its enterprise models and its North platform let organisations deploy AI in private, highly secure environments, meeting strict requirements on security, data residency and compliance.

The company has been building its local team under Hyonju Cho, its Japan Country Manager, and says it will now establish a legal entity in Japan to serve customers locally and invest further in the country's rapidly expanding AI ecosystem. Andrew Chang, Cohere's Vice President for Asia-Pacific, said Japanese organisations increasingly want secure AI solutions that give them greater control over sensitive data and intellectual property.

The Fujitsu partnership and Takane

At the centre of Cohere's Japan push is its partnership with Fujitsu. The two companies worked together to build Takane, a large language model optimised for the Japanese market, based on Cohere's Command series of models. Takane is designed for private deployment in regulated sectors such as finance, healthcare and government, where public-cloud models cannot meet data-governance requirements.

Japan's Digital Agency has selected Takane among the domestic large language models to be evaluated in GENAI, the generative AI environment it is developing as part of government AI efforts. The model is now embedded in Fujitsu's commercial AI infrastructure, integrated into the Fujitsu Kozuchi AI service and offered through the Fujitsu Data Intelligence PaaS platform, reaching customers across Japan's most privacy-sensitive industries.

Cohere is also expanding its Model Vault offering in Japan, a proprietary inference infrastructure that enables secure, region-localised deployment of AI models. The company says the combination of local deployment and local governance is what regulated Japanese customers are asking for as AI moves from pilots into production systems handling real customer and citizen data.

Record funding round behind the expansion

The Japan expansion is backed by a record-setting Series E funding round targeting up to CAD $7 billion, at a valuation of CAD $35.7 billion. Cohere says the funding will accelerate frontier model development, expand enterprise-scale compute infrastructure and strengthen its full-stack AI platform for regulated industries.

Founded in 2019, Cohere positions itself as a provider of sovereign AI for regulated industries and governments, enabling organisations to own, operate and govern their AI systems with greater control over their data, infrastructure and deployment. Japan is emerging as one of the world's leading markets for that approach, as regulators tighten rules on where sensitive data can be processed and who can access it.

Frequently asked questions

What is sovereign AI? Sovereign AI means AI systems whose data, models and infrastructure stay inside a country's borders and under local governance, rather than being processed in foreign clouds. It matters most for regulated sectors such as finance, healthcare and government.

What is Takane? Takane is a Japanese large language model built by Fujitsu with Cohere, based on Cohere's Command series. It is optimised for the Japanese language and designed for private deployment in regulated industries. Japan's Digital Agency has selected it for evaluation in its GENAI environment.

What has Cohere announced in Japan? Plans to establish a Japanese legal entity, expanded sovereign AI initiatives, and growing enterprise adoption, including the Fujitsu partnership and an expansion of its Model Vault inference infrastructure in Japan.

Sources: PR Newswire via AAP, 13 November 2026; Cohere, Fujitsu Takane customer story.