Ivan Zhang

Ivan Zhang is a co-founder and chief technology officer of Cohere, an enterprise artificial intelligence company specializing in large language models and AI products for regulated industries, including finance, healthcare, manufacturing, energy, and the public sector. Zhang has played a key role in shaping Cohere's vision and strategy, focusing on democratizing access to advanced language models for businesses while prioritizing privacy, security, and real-world usability.

Zhang began his studies at the University of Toronto in computer science but left to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. He worked as a backend and infrastructure engineer at a startup before founding FOR.AI, later known as Cohere Labs, where he collaborated with researchers such as Geoffrey Hinton, Lukasz Kaiser, and Aidan Gomez. Zhang co-authored research including "Targeted Dropout," a NeurIPS workshop paper introducing a self-reinforcing-sparsity dropout method for training prunable neural networks. His experience spans software engineering roles in genomics, advertising technology, and cloud computing at early-stage startups and research projects.

As chief technology officer, Zhang has directed Cohere's technical and product development, overseeing infrastructure, model serving pipelines, and developer experience. Under his guidance, Cohere launched offerings such as "Command R" and "Aya Vision," which address enterprise search, summarization, and multimodal AI needs. Cohere's AI products are used by Fortune 500 companies and government agencies across healthcare, finance, and national security sectors. Zhang has contributed AI capabilities to government and security agencies and has advocated for recruiting talent from diverse backgrounds, integrating FOR.AI into Cohere to provide unconventional paths into AI research.

Cohere has expanded globally, with offices in Toronto, San Francisco, London, New York, Paris, and Seoul. The company has been recognized on the Forbes AI 50 list and Zhang has been named to innovation and AI power lists by The Logic and Maclean's. He serves as an advisory board member for the National Research Council of Canada, providing guidance on software and AI research directions.

Zhang has also participated in significant industry developments, including Cohere's merger with Germany's Aleph Alpha and a Series E funding round anchored by Schwarz Group. The combined company brings together model development capabilities, substantial annual recurring revenue, and an established enterprise customer base, including Royal Bank of Canada, Fujitsu, and LG CNS. In addition to his work at Cohere, Zhang is an active angel investor in startups focused on AI, AI chips, and data labeling, with several portfolio companies achieving successful exits or notable valuations. His experience spans entrepreneurship, enterprise AI, and sovereign technology.