Thales Canada picked domestic enterprise AI company Cohere to help develop compatible products for the nation’s navy, a pairing each company pitched as significant advances for the technology and military planning.

The pair signed a partnership agreement covering navy- and maritime-specific AI products, with agentic elements involved. Thales stated the intended move would bring its expertise and corAIx incubator together with Cohere’s large language model capabilities.

Thales Canada CEO Ian Krepps said the company expects to be able to “rapidly deploy new, sovereign AI” capabilities for customers “including the Canadian Armed Forces”.

The arrangement demonstrates Thales’ “commitment” to providing customers with “agile, future ready” products.

Cohere co-founder Ivan Zhang said the partnership is a “strategic leap” in employing AI “for national defence”. The companies will provide systems which “analyse complex naval environments in real time”, delivering “actionable intelligence” to improve military decision making.

Zhang said the deal is also a boost for Canadian AI ambitions.

Thales stated the decision-making capabilities to be provided by the agentic AI systems would benefit projects due to launch imminently.