PeopleofSuperintelligence

Lab leader

Ivan Zhang

Ivan Zhang co-founded Cohere, an enterprise AI company that provides large language models and agentic AI solutions. He studied computer science at the University of Toronto, founded FOR.ai in 2017, and co-authored 2018 papers on cipher cracking and network pruning. In 2023, he and Cohere's other founders topped Maclean's Top 10 AI Trailblazers category. He co-authored Aya Expanse, a multilingual language-model family, in 2024. He joined the National Research Council of Canada's Advisory Board in April 2025 and is a Cohere co-founder as of October 2026.

Now at
Cohere and National Research Council of Canada

Timeline

  1. 2017

    Founding FOR.ai

    He founds FOR.ai as an independent research group in 2017 and works with Aidan Gomez and other machine-learning researchers.

  2. 2018

    CipherGAN and Targeted Dropout

    In 2018, he co-authors CipherGAN, which learns a cipher mapping from unpaired ciphertext and plaintext, and Targeted Dropout, which builds pruning into neural-network training.

  3. 2019

    Co-founding Cohere

    In 2019, he co-founds Cohere with Aidan Gomez and Nick Frosst after working with Gomez at FOR.ai. Cohere is based in Toronto and focuses on enterprise AI.

  4. 2023

    Maclean's AI Trailblazers list

    In 2023, he and Cohere's other founders top Maclean's Top 10 AI Trailblazers category. He is a former computer science student at the University of Toronto.

  5. 2024

    Aya Expanse

    In 2024, he co-authors Aya Expanse, a family of 8B and 32B multilingual language models aiming to match or surpass monolingual models.

  6. Since April 2025

    NRC advisory board role

    Since April 2025, he serves as an Advisory Board Member for the National Research Council of Canada and advises on software and AI matters.

  7. April 2026

    Enterprise AI in Korea

    In April 2026, he reports strong demand among Korean companies for AI assistant systems.

  8. As of October 2026

    Cohere co-founder

    He is a Cohere co-founder as of October 2026. Cohere provides enterprise-optimized large language models and agentic AI solutions.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Ivan Zhang yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Ivan Zhang – C.D. Howe Institute cdhowe.org. Checked 15 October 2026.
  2. Welcome, Cohere! | Salesforce Ventures salesforceventures.com. Checked 15 October 2026.
  3. Unsupervised Cipher Cracking Using Discrete GANs arxiv.org. Checked 15 October 2026.
  4. Targeted Dropout - OATML oatml.cs.ox.ac.uk. Checked 15 October 2026.
  5. Maclean’s ‘Top 10 AI Trailblazers’ list recognizes U of T CS faculty and alumni web.cs.toronto.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  6. About Our Company | Cohere cohere.com. Checked 15 October 2026.
  7. Aya Expanse: Combining Research Breakthroughs for a New Multilingual Frontier arxiv.org. Checked 15 October 2026.
  8. [Exclusive] Cohere Founder: "Korea Has Strong Demand for Enterprise AI Assistants... Control Systems Are Needed" - The Asia Business Daily asiae.co.kr. Checked 15 October 2026.