Artificial-intelligence start-up Cohere has released its North agentic AI workspace into general availability, seven months after an early-access rollout. The platform can be deployed behind customers’ firewalls or on-premises with as few as two graphics cards, a design aimed at heavily regulated sectors concerned about data leakage. Early users include Dell Technologies, Royal Bank of Canada, LG CNS and Ensemble Health Partners. Cohere is also reported to be seeking about US$500 million in new funding at a valuation of up to US$6.5 billion, with annualised revenue expected to exceed US$200 million this year. Google intensified the competition a day later at its Cloud Next conference in Tokyo, previewing a suite of agentic AI tools for data professionals. The Data Engineering Agent in BigQuery automates pipeline creation, while a companion Data Science Agent handles exploratory analysis and model building. Google said the six new agents could cut enterprise data-preparation labour costs by as much as 70 percent. Separately, Aquant introduced an Agentic AI Platform tailored to companies that service complex equipment. The system allows organisations to build, integrate and deploy domain-specific AI agents that connect to existing technology stacks and operate across voice, CRM and offline channels. The trio of launches underscores surging demand for autonomous, enterprise-grade AI that can handle sensitive data, reduce manual workloads and fit inside corporate governance frameworks. Analysts expect more vendors to follow as businesses look to replace repetitive tasks with secure, task-oriented AI agents.