Engineers from the AI developer will sit beside TD's Layer 6 team at MaRS, building agents
TD Bank Group will put up to $25m over three years into a strategic relationship with Toronto-based artificial intelligence company Cohere, under an agreement announced on Tuesday.
The money funds a collaboration between Cohere and Layer 6, the Toronto AI company TD acquired in 2018.
The two organizations will explore how AI can be applied within TD to improve productivity, strengthen decision-making and create better experiences for clients.
A dedicated team of Cohere experts will work alongside Layer 6 at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto, TD said, with areas of focus including knowledge management, security and responsible adoption.
BetaKit reported that the work will also span AI agents and enhanced workflows.
Rizwan Khalfan, executive vice-president and vice chair of strategic growth, innovation and partnerships at TD in Toronto, said Canada has "extraordinary AI talent, research and companies."
Khalfan said the goal is to turn that into "practical applications that create value for clients," according to the bank's release.
He said the Cohere partnership combines "expertise, experimentation and real-world application" to help Canada advance in AI innovation and adoption.
François Chadwick, chief financial officer at Cohere, said the company "was founded in Canada with a mission to help enterprises and governments adopt AI securely and effectively."
He said in the release that Cohere is working with the bank's Layer 6 team "to explore practical applications of enterprise AI that can strengthen productivity, enhance client experiences and support the responsible adoption of AI."
Maks Volkovs, co-founder and chief AI scientist at Layer 6, said in the same release that "world-class AI research creates the greatest impact when it is driven by real-world challenges," describing the collaboration as an opportunity to translate AI advances into practical solutions.
The bank said in its release that the AI spending builds on the five-year, $150bn commitment TD made to accelerate investment, growth and innovation across sectors critical to Canada's economic future.
That commitment covers lending and financing across energy, critical minerals and resources, defence and aerospace, digital and AI, and infrastructure, Reuters reported on September 14, during the Toronto investment summit at which 167 Canadian projects were put before global investors.
AI accounts for $158bn of an estimated $1.5tn to $1.7tn in Canadian project spending over the next decade under a high investment scenario, according to a TD Economics tally of more than 300 projects.
The bank has been investing heavily in AI for years, BetaKit reported, and is an indirect investor in Cohere through limited partner stakes in Toronto venture capital firm Radical Ventures, having tested Cohere's models over that period.
Khalfan and Chadwick discussed the collaboration on stage on the evening of Sept. 22, 2026 at the Nrth Festival in Toronto, according to BetaKit.
Khalfan said the opportunity for TD and Cohere is "immense" and argued that Canada needs more domestic partnerships.
"We are Canadians," Khalfan said, as reported by BetaKit. "We can come together. We can partner with each other, push each other to go to new levels, and this I hope serves as a really good example for the rest of the industry."
Chadwick said that over the past six to 12 months he has had more chief financial officer to chief financial officer conversations about AI return on investment and the technology's capacity to drive productivity and sales in addition to operational efficiency, BetaKit reported.
TD's release also cited a $1m donation to TechSpark's AI Lit for Entrepreneurs accelerator programme, which provides underrepresented founders with training, tools and resources.