Levio and Cohere Partner to Deliver Sovereign AI to Canadian Governments and Enterprises

Canadian technology leaders join forces to help public institutions and regulated industries scale AI while maintaining control of their data, deployment and language environments.

QUEBEC CITY, Sept. 15, 2026 /CNW/ -- Levio, one of Canada's largest fully Canadian-owned system integrators, and Cohere, the Canadian-founded and world's leading sovereign AI company, today announced a strategic partnership to help Canadian governments and regulated enterprises move AI from experimentation to production and scale.

Combining Cohere's enterprise-grade AI models and end-to-end agentic products with Levio's integration, cybersecurity, AI and governance expertise, the partnership will enable organizations to deploy AI in private cloud or on-premises environments while maintaining control over sensitive data.

The partnership builds on work Levio and Cohere have already delivered alongside one another supporting implementation in the Government of Canada.

Aligned with Buy Canadian

The combination of a Canadian enterprise AI technology and Canadian systems integrator is deliberate. The partnership lands squarely within the federal Buy Canadian Policy, in force since December 2025, which prioritizes Canadian suppliers and Canadian content in strategic federal procurement.

Amid growing uncertainty around technology dependencies, data flows and control, Canadian organizations are looking for greater certainty over how and where AI is deployed. This collaboration offers a distinctly Canadian path from the models themselves through integration, governance and deployment.

Delivering Sovereign AI Coast to Coast

Digital sovereignty is best suited for Canada when technology operates naturally within the country's linguistic, institutional and cultural environment. The Levio–Cohere partnership is designed around that broader view of sovereignty, combining private deployment, Canadian integration and governance expertise with AI built for both English- and French-language environments.

Cohere's multilingual technology includes advanced French-language capabilities. For Quebec institutions, that means enterprise AI designed to operate effectively in French while supporting the data control and governance requirements of sensitive and regulated environments.

"What we are building with Cohere is sovereignty-in-a-box: serious enterprise AI, with the architecture, integration and governance expertise to put it to work without giving up control."

-- Marc-Antoine Pinard, Chief Technology Officer and Head of AI at Levio

"Organizations should not have to choose between adopting advanced AI and keeping control of their data, infrastructure and operations. Together with Levio, we're giving public institutions and enterprises a clear path to deploy AI securely on their own terms, with the local expertise to integrate it into their environments and scale with confidence."

-- Joelle Pineau, Chief AI Officer at Cohere

About Levio

Levio is one of Canada's two largest fully Canadian-owned system integrators specializing in digital transformation. With close to 2,000 professionals, Levio orchestrates large-scale, complex initiatives across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and data, serving government, financial services, insurance, healthcare, aerospace and retail. Levio is a signatory to We Must Act Now: A Statement on AI's Transformation of the Economy and to the Government of Canada's Voluntary Code of Conduct on the Responsible Development and Management of Advanced Generative AI Systems. For more information, visit levioconsulting.com.

About Cohere

Cohere, founded in 2019, is the world's leading sovereign AI company building cutting-edge foundation models and end-to-end AI products to solve real-world business problems. We partner with organizations to deliver seamless integration, customization and user-friendly solutions. Our all-in-one platform provides maximum security, privacy and deployment flexibility across clouds, private environments and on-premises. Headquartered in Toronto and San Francisco, Cohere operates additional offices in London, New York, Montreal, Paris, and Seoul, serving customers worldwide.

The company has raised ~$1.6BUSD from strategic tech investors (AMD Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Oracle, Cisco), institutional investors (Radical Ventures, Inovia Capital, PSP Investments, HOOPP, BDC, Nexxus), and AI pioneers including Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Pieter Abbeel and Raquel Urtasun. For more information, visit cohere.com.

SOURCE Levio

For more information, please contact: Anne-Marie Côté, Partner, Co-Lead Communications and Marketing, Levio, [email protected]; Patrick Allen, Communications Manager, Canada, [email protected]; For media requests, please contact: Jessica Rousseau, Senior Consultant, TACT, [email protected], 438-396-8288