Oracle has invested in generative AI company Cohere, in a deal that valued the business at around $2.2 billion.
The $270m Series C round also saw participation from Nvidia and Salesforce.
Oracle's investment is said to loosely mirror that of Microsoft with OpenAI and Google with Anthropic, as tech giants look for promising startups in the burgeoning generative AI space.
The Information reports that Oracle plans to integrate Cohere's large language models (LLMs) into its HR software and other products. However, while Microsoft has exclusive rights to resell OpenAI products on Azure, Cohere has publicly said that it is "cloud agnostic." The company aims for its models to also work on private clouds or with on-prem deployments.
Cohere's models are already available on Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services, and there is no indication that that will change in the future. The startup focuses on enterprise customers, and offers to work with businesses to develop custom models.
Oracle is expected to focus on the potential additional security gained by accessing Cohere's models through the company's cloud service. The company is also developing its own LLMs, which it may roll out to its cloud service.