Ivan Zhang is a Co-Founder of Cohere. He has been instrumental in shaping the company’s vision and strategy since co-founding it in September 2019 with Aidan Gomez and Nick Frosst. Under his leadership, Cohere has grown into a global leader in enterprise AI with offices in Toronto, San Francisco, London, New York, Paris, and Seoul.
As a co-founder, Ivan provides strategic guidance and leadership to Cohere’s executive team, playing a key role in setting the company’s mission and direction. He spearheaded enterprise-focused AI products that are now used by Fortune 500 companies across healthcare, finance, and government sectors, as well as by government agencies. Ivan has established significant partnerships with major organizations throughout his tenure.
Ivan’s expertise extends to national security and defense, where he has worked with government and security agencies, contributing his AI capabilities to important missions. Since April 2025, he has served as an Advisory Board Member for the National Research Council of Canada, advising on software and AI matters to inform research directions and investments.
Beyond Cohere, Ivan is an active angel investor in startups across AI, AI chips, and data labeling sectors, with many portfolio companies achieving successful exits or reaching significant valuations. He previously founded FOR.AI (now Cohere Labs) in 2017, where he collaborated with leading researchers including Nobel Prize and Turing award winner Geoffrey Hinton, and Transformer inventors Lukasz Kaiser and Aidan Gomez.
Ivan began his studies at the University of Toronto, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts & Science in Computer Science, though he left the university to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. His background includes software engineering experience in genomics, ad tech, and cloud computing at various early-stage startups and research projects.