Cohere's Joëlle Pineau: 'We aim for AI that creates value for businesses, not superintelligence'

Joëlle Pineau in Paris, April 10, 2024. ROMUALD MEIGNEUX/SIPA

"We create value, not magic." This is how Joëlle Pineau sums up the positioning of Cohere, the Canadian artificial intelligence (AI) start-up where she became head of research in August 2025. Like French AI pioneer Yann LeCun in November 2025, the former number two in AI research at Meta recently left Mark Zuckerberg's company. Though Pineau is careful not to directly criticize her former employer, she does distance herself from the rhetoric around "superintelligence" or "artificial general intelligence," capable of matching or surpassing humans in most tasks, as promoted by major AI players like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and now, Meta.

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"We aim to develop artificial intelligence that delivers return on investment for businesses, rather than superintelligence," she explained, considering the concept of artificial general intelligence "too abstract."