{"id":26465,"date":"2026-04-30T17:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/26465\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T17:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:36:07","slug":"cohere-buys-naming-rights-to-ottawa-convention-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/26465\/","title":{"rendered":"Cohere buys naming rights to Ottawa convention centre"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Partnership will take effect on May 1 with rebranding rolling out in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>As of May 1, you won\u2019t be able to go to Ottawa\u2019s Capital Exhibition Centre, also known as the EY Centre, anymore. Instead, you\u2019ll have to catch your conferences at the <a href=\"https:\/\/coherecentre.ca\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">Cohere Centre<\/a>, after the venue announced a rebrand in partnership with the leading Canadian AI company.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The newly christened Cohere Centre is the largest venue of its kind in Ottawa<\/p>\n<p>The exhibition and event facility announced the name change on April 30, stating that it had entered into a naming rights agreement with <a href=\"https:\/\/cohere.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">Cohere<\/a>. Changes to the venue\u2019s signage and branding reflecting the new name will be rolled out over the coming weeks. As of today, a <a href=\"https:\/\/coherecentre.ca\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">new website<\/a> has been launched. The EY Centre\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/eycentre.ca\/about-us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">page<\/a> remains active and does not redirect to the new site as of press time.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Owned and operated by the <a href=\"https:\/\/shenkmancorp.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">Shenkman Group of Companies<\/a>, the newly dubbed Cohere Centre is a 200,000-square-foot exhibition and meeting space near the Ottawa International Airport. It\u2019s the largest venue of its kind in Ottawa, hosting everything from conferences and trade shows to corporate and government events.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis partnership reflects our shared commitment to Canadian innovation, collaboration, and creating spaces where important ideas and meaningful connections can thrive,\u201d Cohere\u2019s Dave Ferris said in a statement released on Thursday. \u201cWe are pleased to support a venue that brings together business, government, technology, and community in the nation\u2019s capital.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/betakit.com\/coheres-valuation-hits-7-billion-usd-following-100-million-round-extension\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">Cohere\u2019s valuation hits $7 billion USD following $100-million round extension<\/a><\/p>\n<p>BetaKit reached out to both Cohere, and the Cohere Centre\u2019s general manager, Neill Bales, to ask for details about the terms of the agreement and the dollar figure associated with the naming agreement and rebrand, but neither responded to our questions as of press time.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In a press release, Bales called the partnership a \u201ctestament to Ottawa\u2019s emergence as a hub for innovation and world class events.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Cohere primarily focuses on enterprise-grade, large language models and AI for business applications. Earlier this month, the company announced that it plans to <a href=\"https:\/\/betakit.com\/cohere-to-acquire-germanys-aleph-alpha-in-sovereign-ai-play\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">acquire Germany\u2019s Aleph Alpha<\/a>. The joint entity will reportedly be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/4492c0d6-855b-4164-9ae5-f4d855a95f1e?syn-25a6b1a6=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">valued at $20 billion USD, or $27 billion CAD<\/a>. Its global headquarters is in Toronto, San Francisco and Germany, with offices in London, New York, Montreal, Paris and Seoul, South Korea.<\/p>\n<p>Feature image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Partnership will take effect on May 1 with rebranding rolling out in the coming weeks. &#13; As of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1660,12797,4883,12798,94,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-26465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ottawa","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-capital-exhibition-centre","10":"tag-cohere","11":"tag-cohere-centre","12":"tag-ontario","13":"tag-ottawa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}