Aidan Gomez, The CEO and co-founder of AI company Cohere has joined Rivian’s board of directors. The addition to Rivian is strategic in further solidifying its focus on software driven innovation and AI for the automotive market.
Popular AI personality Aidan Gomez is probably best known for being one of the co-authors of the very popular 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need”,which published the transformer model that big language models such as ChatGPT are based on. AI giant Geoffrey Hinton was Gomez’s boss at Google Brain before Gomez moved to start Cohere in 2019.
Cohere is also well recognized to develop enterprise grade AI models and its technology powers solutions in companies like Notion and Oracle. With Gomez, Rivian aims to take advantage of his AI expertise and solidify its tech centered ecosystem.
The step is a follow up to Rivian’s bold move into its software plans. Rivian and the Volkswagen Group formed a joint venture in July of 2024 valued at $5.8 billion to share equally the burden of developing next generation automobile software platforms. Rivian is sub leasing valuable intellectual property and its electrical architecture in the agreement.
Aside from its work with Volkswagen, Rivian is also developing an AI assistant for its own vehicles independently. The new company, founded in 2023, aims to enhance the “Orchestration layer” of user experience in an effort to make the in car experience simpler and more user focused.
Gomez was recruited by Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe as part of a significant move to bring state of the art technologies to Rivian operations, products and services. The firm holds the view that artificial intelligence will be at the core of optimizing the efficiency of production and operation and end user experience.
Gomez’s joining the board adds further depth to Rivian’s leadership as the EV space remains more and more competitive and innovative. His enterprise level application and core AI research experience will shape Rivian’s future product strategy and software platform.
This expansion indicates Rivian’s excitement about being cutting-edge not only in AI car intelligence but clean transportation as well and making the company a futurist in the tech meets mobility arena.
