The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday, Sept. 19, edition that in April, Toronto-based Cohere and Heidelberg-based Aleph Alpha announced a deal to combine operations, and last week, they said they had signed the agreement. The Globe's Joe Castaldo writes that the goal is to create a bigger, more powerful AI company. A larger AI company would offer language models (LLMs) and services to governments and businesses, positioned as an alternative to Microsoft-backed OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet's Google. Cohere chief executive officer Aiden Gomez recently criticized some of his competitors as a "cartel" for prioritizing safety over the pace of AI development. The deal highlights efforts by Canada and its allies to influence AI technology, which has global implications but is mainly developed by a few powerful U.S. companies amid rising geopolitical tensions. China is also advancing in AI. This context may explain the Canadian and German governments' talk to fund Cohere's next round. While the deal has been presented as a merger, it is more akin to an acquisition of Aleph Alpha. It was founded in 2019 to build LLMs, but gave up to instead help companies and the public sector implement AI.