Cohere and Fujitsu Join Forces to Unveil ‘Takane’ – A Japanese LLM Designed for Enterprises

As enterprises embrace the potential of AI, companies developing foundational models are expanding their global reach. Recently, OpenAI established its first Asian hub in Tokyo, while Anthropic collaborated with Singapore’s SKT to create a custom AI model. Now, Canada-based AI startup Cohere has forged a strategic partnership with Japanese IT giant Fujitsu.

This collaboration involves a significant investment from Fujitsu, enabling Cohere to leverage its expertise in developing large language models (LLMs) tailored for Japanese language applications. This initiative will empower businesses and startups in Japan to integrate advanced Japanese LLMs into their products, enhancing customer and employee experiences. While Fujitsu has historically excelled in tech hardware, its revenue has increasingly come from IT services in recent years.

Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere, stated, "This strategic partnership with Fujitsu is a crucial step in delivering world-class LLM capabilities to one of the most important enterprise markets. To unlock the full potential of AI, we must meet enterprises in their own cloud environments and languages."

Among the upcoming models is tentatively named ‘Takane,’ meaning "mountain peak." It will be based on Cohere’s advanced Command R+ model, designed specifically for real-world business applications.

What We Know About the Cohere-Fujitsu Partnership

Although specific products have yet to launch, the partnership aims to combine Cohere's AI models with Fujitsu's expertise in Japanese language training. Fujitsu has developed various technologies at the intersection of data and AI, including a knowledge graph-based RAG system, generative AI technologies for optimizing model performance, and compliance-focused AI auditing solutions.

The collaboration will merge these technologies with Cohere’s Command R+, offering enterprise-level RAG with citation features to minimize inaccuracies, multilingual support in ten key business languages, and a powerful Tool Use API for automating complex workflows. This integrated approach will deliver adaptable AI solutions powered by robust Japanese LLMs, tailored to meet business needs.

Fujitsu anticipates that the Takane model will enhance productivity and efficiency for local enterprises across various functions. In addition to Takane, Cohere plans to deploy its Embed and Rerank models to develop advanced enterprise search applications and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems.

Upcoming Availability

Fujitsu will serve as the exclusive provider of the Japanese language models developed with Cohere. The Takane model is set to be available for enterprises in private environments by September 2024, through Fujitsu's Kozuchi cloud-based AI platform. Additionally, the partnership will utilize Fujitsu's Data Intelligence PaaS and Uvance offerings to deliver tailored solutions to customers.

While some may view Cohere's partnership with Fujitsu as less impactful than OpenAI’s dedicated AI hub, this strategic approach will undoubtedly grant the startup access to a broader customer base in Japan. Similarly, Perplexity's partnership with SoftBank reflects this trend of leveraging strategic alliances for market expansion.

So far, Cohere has not disclosed the identities of the Japanese companies involved in this initiative.