Canada’s Cohere is tripling its physical footprint in the UK by signing a lease on a new London office at 100 New Oxford Street, moving from its current home in Soho later this year. The 14,000 sq ft office has room for up to 100 staff, against roughly 80 today, as demand for “sovereign AI” accelerates. Founded in 2019, Cohere builds large language models tailored to businesses and governments, promising not to retain customer data and offering models deployable on-premises or inside private clouds. Its UK customers include Reuters, the Aston Martin Formula One team and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. In April, Cohere acquired German start-up Aleph Alpha to create a “transatlantic AI powerhouse”, valued at around $20bn. Cohere’s co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez said, “By expanding our London footprint threefold, we’re positioning ourselves at the heart of the UK’s sovereign AI revolution.” Sovereign AI refers to independent development and governance of AI tools without relying on foreign infrastructure. The UK government has stood up a dedicated £500m Sovereign AI unit, and the European Union launched its technology sovereignty legislation earlier this month. McKinsey estimates that sovereignty requirements could shape between $500b.