Aston Martin’s Spanish driver Fernando Alonso leaves the pits during his third practice session ahead of the F1 Japanese Grand Prix on March 28th. Canadian AI company Cohere partnered with the team in March.Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty Images
New signage will be installed in Ottawa’s large exhibit hall in the coming days. The building, previously known as the EY Center, was renamed the Cohere Center after Canadian artificial intelligence company Cohere Inc. purchased the naming rights.
The Hilton’s 220,000 square feet of trade show, conference and concert space near the Ottawa Airport is a far cry from Crypto.com Arena, home to many professional sports teams in Los Angeles. In contrast, upcoming events at Kohia Center include liquidation sales and fitness contests.
But the Cohere deal in Ottawa is the latest effort by the cash-rich, profit-hungry AI industry to raise awareness and win customers in a competitive market filled with hype.
Cohere has been busy in this regard. In February, it signed chess champion Magnus Carlsen as a brand ambassador, appearing in campaigns, events and “thought leadership initiatives.” The following month, it entered into a partnership with Formula 1 racing team Aston Martin Aramco. As part of the deal, the Cohere logo will be displayed on the side of the chassis and front wing mirrors of team cars (Cohere’s AI data center company CoreWeave Inc. signed its own sponsorship deal with the racing team last year).
Rivals such as Anthropic and Google have agreements with F1, as well as AI search company Perplexity. Anthropic and OpenAI started advertising during this year’s Super Bowl, but cricket has been attracting AI companies lately. OpenAI and Google (particularly its AI search mode) sponsor the Indian women’s and men’s Premier League, respectively. And Legora, an AI company that develops tools for lawyers, released a commercial featuring actor Jude Law in April (law, (Get it?) Not long after they raised $550 million.
“Attention is now the rarest asset,” said Scott Stevenson, CEO of legal AI company Spellbook.Johnny Shee Lum/Globe and Mail
Marketing budgets are probably not a huge issue compared to the billions of dollars some of these companies spend on data center capacity. But when AI companies start naming race cars after themselves and hiring Hollywood stars, it’s either a sign of confidence in their business model or a sign of reckless enthusiasm. Or maybe it’s a little bit of both.
“Attention is the rarest asset right now,” said Scott Stevenson, CEO of Canadian legal AI company Spellbook. “AI makes it easier to write software and create content. Eyes are the limiting factor for everyone, and there is a massive race to get in front of them before their competitors.”
Cohere has a unique marketing challenge. Larger competitors such as Anthropic and OpenAI offer consumer chatbots with strong brand recognition, in addition to services for businesses and governments. Cohere does not have a consumer presence and sells to corporate and public sector customers. “It’s a disadvantage in terms of getting our name out there,” said co-founder Nick Frost. “We’re definitely getting a little more bold about how we tell our stories and spending more on marketing as a result.”
He declined to say how much Cohere’s ad spend has increased, but characterized the approach as pragmatic. “Many AI companies are spending much more,” he said.
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Technology booms and busts also involve marketing blitzes. Dot-com companies like Pets.com spent heavily on Super Bowl advertising in 2000, before it cratered, while Internet service provider PSINet bought the naming rights to the stadium, home to the Baltimore Ravens, in 1999. Two years later, the company filed for bankruptcy.
Decades later, crypto companies started spreading the money around. One Operation, DigitalBits, Sponsor of Soccer Inter Milan The club was founded in 2021 but stopped paying due to the collapse in the value of digital tokens. Cryptocurrency company Voyager Digital becomes NBA sponsor He was with the Dallas Mavericks in 2021 and filed for bankruptcy the following year. But Crypto.com’s US$700 million purchase of the naming rights to LA’s former Staples Center remains in effect.
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AI companies are emerging now. Some marketing efforts are more likely to be successful than others. There’s a reason, for example, that AI companies are flocking to F1 teams. While many expect the sport’s upscale image to be reflected in their brands, science and design are essential to F1, which competes with AI companies trading on the same attributes. “These brands are involved in F1 because there is a connection between engineering, data, analytics and human intelligence,” said Michael Narain, associate professor of sports management at Brock University.
In some cases, AI companies aim to score businesses beyond simply placing logos on things. Kohia’s deal with Aston Martin Aramco was pitched as a partnership to “help accelerate AI innovation.” The team said it will integrate Cohere’s large-scale language models for data analysis and use North, the company’s AI platform, to automate back-office tasks. Mr. Frost declined to comment on the financial terms of the deal or the associated revenue.
More generally, AI could be useful in F1. In F1, cars are equipped with sensors that generate large amounts of data. Proper analysis of this information can help drivers improve their performance so they can reach the finish line as quickly as possible. “Without some form of big data modeling, it’s almost impossible to get a real-time overview of what’s going on in different areas of the car,” said Stephen Stewart, an associate professor in the human sciences department at St. Paul’s University in Ottawa.
The return on investment for these marketing efforts is a big question. “They’ll pay a lot of money to put their logo on something cool, but what are the criteria?” said Professor Narain. “Some brands feel obligated because their competitors are doing something.”
Cohere co-founder Nick Frost. “We’re definitely getting a little more bold in how we tell our stories.”Christopher Katsarov/Globe and Mail
At Kohia, Frost said the company tracks brand awareness. For example, purchasing the naming rights for the Ottawa Convention Center would help put Kohia in the minds of various government officials and businessmen who travel to and from the capital. The deal also comes before major market Kohia Center hosts a major security and defense conference later this month.
Chess, on the other hand, is closely connected to the development of AI, particularly the moment in 1997 when IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue defeated world champion Garry Kasparov. Kohia’s office is littered with chess boards, and Frost regularly plays chess games with the likes of Jeffrey Hinton, who won the Nobel Prize in 2024 for his pioneering AI research.
transaction with Magnus Carlsen has some ideological alignments. “We have a vision of how this technology can empower and enable industry-specific sovereignty, and I think Magnus embodies exactly that,” Frost said. “He is a very unique and powerful person.”
At Spellbook, Mr. Stevenson doesn’t feel he has to hire a big-name actor like Legola. He discovered that Spellbook’s best marketing strategy was word of mouth – making a product so good that customers would recommend it. This means investing in traditional marketing channels like events, paid advertising, and an outbound sales team. The company plans to launch a fellowship fund to sponsor lawyers as part of its marketing efforts, but Stevenson declined to provide details.
As for big sponsorship deals and other marketing deals in AI, we don’t know what that portends. “It’s incredibly difficult to say what is par for the course,” he said. “I’ve never seen technology adopted so quickly and revenue grow so quickly. We’re in uncharted territory.”
