Aidan Gomez
Born 1996 · Age 29
British-Canadian computer scientist and entrepreneur focused on AI and natural language processing; co-founder and CEO of Cohere; co-author of the 2017 Transformer paper.
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Life & Career Timeline
Grew up in Brighton, Ontario (early life)
Raised in Brighton, Ontario (family and childhood background that shaped early education interests). Year is approximate.
Started undergraduate studies at University of Toronto
Began Honours Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics (approximate start year based on graduation year 2018).
Undergraduate research / TA work (GANs / cipher cracking)
Worked as a teaching assistant and research intern on supervised cipher cracking with generative adversarial networks during undergrad.
Co-authored 'Attention Is All You Need' (Transformer paper)
One of eight co-authors of the seminal 2017 paper that introduced the Transformer architecture, which transformed NLP and enabled modern LLMs.
Intern at Google Brain (age 20)
Worked as an intern at Google Brain (credited as a 20-year-old intern in 2017), gaining exposure to large-scale ML research.
Co-authored 'One Model to Learn Them All' (multi-task learning)
Contributed to research on a single neural network handling multiple tasks (multi-task learning).
Founded FOR.ai (later Cohere For AI)
Launched FOR.ai, a collaborative program to help researchers learn ML techniques; later evolved into Cohere For AI.
Graduated University of Toronto (BSc, Computer Science & Math)
Completed an Honours Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Toronto (graduation year cited as 2018).
Google Brain internship — first nine months of 2018
Worked at Google Brain (first nine months of 2018), collaborating with senior researchers and working on knowledge distillation and multi-task learning.
Collaborated with prominent researchers at Google Brain
Worked alongside researchers such as Geoffrey Hinton, Jeff Dean, and others while at Google Brain; involvement in pathways and transformers research noted.
Transitioned to Google Brain student researcher (Berlin)
Between Feb and Sep 2019 transitioned to a student researcher role on the Google Brain team in Berlin, working on pathways and visual understanding with transformers.
Paused PhD studies to launch Cohere
Paused doctoral work at the University of Oxford to focus on building Cohere (subsequently resumed and later awarded degree).
Co-founded Cohere (CEO)
Left Google Brain to co-found Cohere in September 2019 with Nick Frosst and Ivan Zhang; appointed CEO of the enterprise-focused NLP company.
Cohere begins enterprise deployments (commercial milestone)
Cohere focused on enterprise LLM/NLP products for chatbots, search, summarization and other business use cases (ongoing commercial rollout; year indicative).
Cohere customer milestone — Spotify uses embeddings
Cohere provided embedding models used by Spotify to enable multilingual search (reported use across 109 languages).
Named #1 on Maclean's AI Trailblazers Power List (with co-founders)
Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang and Nick Frosst were ranked #1 on Maclean's 2023 AI Trailblazers Power List.
Cohere raised a funding round (latest round cited)
Highperformr notes the company's latest funding round dated 8 June 2023 (specific amount not provided in source text).
Featured in Bloomberg piece on AI startups
Mentioned in Bloomberg coverage profiling major AI startups and 'AI superstars' that Google alumni founded (coverage dated July 12, 2023).
Named to TIME100 AI list (Time 100/AI)
Included in Time magazine's inaugural TIME100 AI list of the most influential people in AI (Sept 2023).
Continued role as Cohere CEO (ongoing)
Remains co-founder and CEO, leading product/deployment of LLM/NLP technologies for enterprises.
Cohere funding — aggregate reported figures
Sources in the dossier/aggregators report Cohere total funding figures (examples in sources: $270M total or claims of 'over $400M' raised); amounts vary by source.
Tweeted about starting industrial career; PhD ultimately granted in 2024
Public note (Twitter) about embarking on industrial career; Wikipedia notes his PhD (University of Oxford) was ultimately granted in 2024 after pause to build Cohere.
Cohere valuation reported at $5.5 billion
Bloomberg reported a Cohere valuation of $5.5 billion as of July 2024 following a funding round / revaluation.
Cohere company size snapshot (employees)
Company snapshot data (Highperformr) shows Cohere with ~325 employees (platform/company profile data; snapshot year approx. 2024–2025).
Ongoing recognition and industry profile
Continues to be profiled by outlets like Bloomberg, Time, Maclean's and venture partners for leadership in enterprise AI and contributions to LLMs.
Elected to the board of Rivian
April 2025: Aidan Gomez was elected to the board of electric vehicle maker Rivian, signaling corporate governance role outside Cohere.
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