Thales and Cohere Partner to Accelerate AI Integration for Naval In-Service Support in Canada
Press Release
Thales Canada and Cohere, an enterprise AI leader, have signed a partnership agreement for advanced AI solutions for naval and maritime in-service support.
This partnership will accelerate the development and secure deployment of agentic AI1 tools which can analyze and adapt to complex moving environments in real time.
The agreement also supports joint research and development to support the digital transformation of naval in-service support and future agentic AI applications in defence.
Thales Canada, a global leader in advanced defence and digital technologies, today announced a partnership agreement with Cohere to provide agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) for naval and maritime in-service support services.
This partnership combines Thales leadership in naval and maritime in-service support in Canada as well as Thales’ AI incubator, cortAIx, with Cohere’s expertise in large language models and AI-powered applications, enabling the rapid delivery of advanced capabilities to the Canadian Armed Forces. It will also accelerate the development and secure deployment of agentic AI tools to enhance intelligence and operational decision-making across projects slated to launch this year. This collaboration further exemplifies Thales’ support of the Canadian Industrial and Technological Benefits Policy through partnership with a homegrown global leader to deliver a sovereign solution for in-service support.
“Thales is committed to delivering value to our customers, with a focus on flexibility, speed and mission effectiveness,” said Ian Krepps, CEO, Thales Canada. “Partnering with Cohere enables us to rapidly deploy new, sovereign AI-powered capabilities for our customers, including the Canadian Armed Forces. This partnership reflects our commitment to providing our customers with agile, future-ready Canadian AI solutions that deliver value, capability and unlock new capacity.”
"This partnership with Thales Canada marks a strategic leap in responsibly deploying AI for national defence," said Ivan Zhang, Co-founder, Cohere. "Together, we're bringing secure, sovereign AI solutions to Canada's maritime forces that analyze complex naval environments in real time. Our agentic systems will deliver actionable intelligence at operational speed, directly enhancing mission readiness while strengthening Canada's position as a global leader in AI adoption."
Thales in Artificial Intelligence
cortAIx, Thales AI accelerator in critical systems, created in 2024, brings together more than 800 AI experts across four hubs – in France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Singapore – and unifies Thales’ research, engineering and industrialisation activities in AI for critical environments. For over a decade, Thales’ significant investments in R&D, as Europe’s leading patent applicant in AI for critical systems, have enabled the integration of artificial intelligence into more than a hundred of its products, providing customers with a decisive advantage and enhanced resilience, while keeping humans in control.
About Thales
Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) is a global leader in advanced technologies for the Defence, Aerospace, and Cyber & Digital sectors. Its portfolio of innovative products and services addresses several major challenges: sovereignty, security, sustainability and inclusion.
The Group invests more than €4 billion per year in Research & Development in key areas, particularly for critical environments, such as Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, quantum and cloud technologies.
Thales has more than 83,000 employees in 68 countries. In 2024, the Group generated sales of €20.6 billion.
About Thales in Canada
A Canadian leader in research and technology, Thales Canada combines over 50 years of experience with the talent of over 1,400 skilled people from coast-to-coast. Thales Canada offers leading capabilities in the defence, civil aviation, digital identity and security sectors – meeting the most complex needs and requirements of its customers across all operating environments.
About Cohere
Cohere is the leading security-first enterprise AI company. We build cutting-edge foundation models and end-to-end AI products designed to solve real-world business problems. We partner closely with companies to deliver seamless integration, full customization, and easy-to-use solutions for their workforce and customers. Our all-in-one platform offers enterprises the highest levels of security, data privacy and optionality to deploy across all major cloud providers, private cloud environments, or on-premises.
Noah Note: Cohere has finally managed to secure, somewhat, of a DND contract. This was an inevitability really. Cohere has slowly build it's as Canada’s leading AI enterprise. Backed by a new MOU with the federal government, Cohere has been slolwy rising through the ranks the last several months.
There is a lot of perceived value in AI, especially when it comes to shipbuilding and maintenance. Of course the full details of how this will play out between Thales and Cohere is yet to be seen, leveraging AI in the ship repair and inspection process especially has the power to significantly transform how we maintain ships.
From leveraging digital twins, using AI to rapidly scan over products, and leveraging Manned-Unmanned pairing to steamline efficency in the workforce, there is a lot of avenues one can play off of here, if one desired. Thats before we get talking about using AI as an automation tool.
Cohere stands to benefit most from Canada’s injection of billions into the AI industry as outlined in budget 2025. The company itself fairly young, only founded in 2019. Its executive suite now features talent from the likes of Google and Meta. I honestly don't know them well, however I hear great things about the team there, and their desire to break into the defence market.
That doesnt mean they aren't without issues. They're currently in the midst of a copyright lawsuit, and are still susceptible to a volatile AI Industry. We don't need anymore ‘Dot Com’ companies popping up and crashing when things shift. I watch eager, but cautious.
Again we will have to see how exactly this pans out. I have some hope that we can see cool things, and it certainly won't be the last you hear from Cohere on TNSR.