# AI sovereignty depends on a diverse supply of providers

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-sovereignty-depends-on-a-diverse-supply-of-providers/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Aidan Gomez](https://realalpha.app/builders/aidan-gomez/) · Aidan Gomez is co-founder and CEO of Cohere. · Co-founded Cohere, the sovereign AI company, and co-authored the Transformer paper, Attention Is All You Need.
- Host: [Alex Konrad](https://realalpha.app/people/alex-konrad/) · Founder & editor, Upstarts Media · Ran Forbes' Midas List for ten years and co-created its Cloud 100 list; founded Upstarts in 2025.
- Show: Upstarts
- Episode: [Cohere's Aidan Gomez: The Canadian Founder Taking AI Models To The World, Not Just Big Tech](https://realalpha.app/v/RZ9I_CsDaoo/), Apr 16, 2026
- Moment: 25:13 to 29:25 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-sovereignty-depends-on-a-diverse-supply-of-providers/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/RZ9I_CsDaoo/?t=1513

## Quote

> “i actually think it's **existential to democracy** if you love democracy if you love people um having self-governance”
> — [Aidan Gomez](https://realalpha.app/builders/aidan-gomez/) at [27:05](https://realalpha.app/v/RZ9I_CsDaoo/?t=1625) · Upstarts

## Takeaways

1. Canada's tech capacity is part of Cohere's mission.
2. Countries need diverse suppliers, not total self-sufficiency.
3. Multiple contributors help protect democratic resilience.

## About this segment

Aidan Gomez says democracies need more independent technology capacity, not dependence on one or two countries. A diverse set of suppliers can help nations build resilience.

From “Cohere's Aidan Gomez: The Canadian Founder Taking AI Models To The World, Not Just Big Tech”, Apr 16, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/RZ9I_CsDaoo/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[25:20](https://realalpha.app/v/RZ9I_CsDaoo/?t=1520) over the past 100 years. Would that help explain why Cohere has sought out or prioritized these sovereign customers so that other nations benefit or have their own sort of, you know, AI models, AI foundation they can trust that isn't dependent on one central place? Or is that more sort of incidental of where the tools, you know, flourish? Yeah, well, definitely over the past quarter century, sovereign capabilities in particular in technology have really declined outside the US and China. Like the US and China are still incredible strongholds of progress in technology. But where I'm from in Canada or where my parents are from in Europe, yeah, there just hasn't, there's been a gradual sort of, I don't know whether to describe it as like complacency or a hollowing out of the technological ambition

[26:12](https://realalpha.app/v/RZ9I_CsDaoo/?t=1572) and capability of the various nations, and a hollowing out of sovereignty. We depend so much on a single source. We depend so much on one of a couple different places where we can buy things from, but we can't do it ourselves. And the reality is we can do it ourselves. We've just grown too comfortable. In part, founding Cohere in Toronto and keeping it a Canadian company. It's been an intentional choice to support this notion of resilience.

[26:42](https://realalpha.app/v/RZ9I_CsDaoo/?t=1602) And we're only going to have resilient democracies if more than one player can provide to the group capabilities. It doesn't mean we all need to do everything, right? We don't all need to build language models. That is, like, hyper-inefficient. But we need a diverse supply chain. We need a diverse set of dependencies. so that it's not all concentrated in one place and that's something that you know i want to contribute to and i think is i actually think it's existential to democracy if you love democracy if you love people um having self-governance and having a say in in how they are they're governed you can't have these single lines of dependency on any one country because if something happens to that democracy, suddenly everything breaks.

[27:38](https://realalpha.app/v/RZ9I_CsDaoo/?t=1658) The whole project falls apart. And so you need a decentralized, diversified set of contributors to each core technological pillar. operating at this infrastructure layer, these other countries or cultures can be building on top of it and feel more comfortable than if they were getting everything as an application from Silicon Valley? Exactly. Yeah. Like it's not just, you're not just reliant on one place.

[28:08](https://realalpha.app/v/RZ9I_CsDaoo/?t=1688) You have options and you can build resilience through interdependence with multiple different parties instead of just one. That's really what we've seen kind of hollow out is this notion of multiple parties inside this broad democratic coalition contributing. You know, there's been a lot of voiced frustration about that, like different parties not contributing enough and sort of just like riding off of the efforts and expenses of one party. And I think there's really a deep truth to that. And we need to step up to fix that. And I think Cohere is part of, on the AI file, at least, but across many files, right? Like on energy independence and manufacturing and all these different fundamental parts of building a country. Those of us in liberal democracies need to contribute and step up and invest at the scale necessary to support developing

[29:09](https://realalpha.app/v/RZ9I_CsDaoo/?t=1749) these fundamental pillars of the economy. When you come to a place like San Francisco, where we are today, do you feel like an upstart or a contrarian by holding those views? Or do you