Fujitsu picks model-maker Cohere as its partner for the rapid LLM-development dance

Fujitsu has made a "significant investment" in Toronto-based Cohere, a developer of large language models and associated tech, and will bring the five-year-old startup's wares to the world.

The relationship has four elements, one of which will see the two work on a Japanese-language LLM that's been given the working title Takane. Fujitsu will offer Takane to its Japanese clients. Takane will be based on Cohere's latest LLM, Command R+, which we're told features "enhanced retrieval-augmented generation capabilities to mitigate hallucinations."

The duo will also build models "to serve the needs of global businesses."

The third element of the relationship will see Fujitsu appointed the exclusive provider of jointly developed services. The pair envisage those services as private cloud deployments "to serve organizations in highly regulated industries including financial institutions, the public sector, and R&D units."

The fourth and final element of the deal will see Takane integrated with Fujitsu's generative AI amalgamation technology – a service that selects, and if necessary combines, models to get the best tools for particular jobs.

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It's 2024, so no IT services provider can afford not to be developing generative AI assets and partnerships. To do otherwise it to risk missing out on the chance of winning business in the hottest new enterprise workload for years, and thereby forgetting the time-honored enterprise sales tactic of "land and expand." At worst – if things go pear-shaped – they end up as a siloed app that becomes legacy tech and can be milked for years.

This deal is notable, given the likes of OpenAI, Mistral AI, and Anthropic are seen as the LLM market leaders worthy of ring-kissing by global tech players.

By partnering with Canadian Cohere, Fujitsu has taken a different path – and perhaps differentiated itself.

Cohere is not, however, a totally left-field choice. Nvidia and Cisco have invested in the biz, and its models are sufficiently well regarded and in demand that AWS, Microsoft and HuggingFace have all included its wares in their ModelMarts. ®