Cohere releases Command R+
Launched first on Microsoft Azure, the larger companion to March's Command R kept the same 128K context but was pitched as competitive with GPT-4-class models.
- Models & capabilities
- Benchmarks & progress
- Minor
Cohere released Command R+, three weeks after Command R, calling it the most powerful and scalable model the company had built. Chief executive Aidan Gomez announced the model alongside a launch partnership with Microsoft Azure, where it became available first before spreading to other cloud platforms in the following weeks.
Like its smaller sibling, Command R+ retained a 128,000-token context window and was built around the same enterprise priorities: retrieval-augmented generation, multi-step tool use, and workflow automation for tasks such as categorisation, data analysis and CRM automation, across more than ten languages. Cohere said the larger model was competitive with more expensive frontier systems including GPT-4 Turbo on business-relevant tasks, while remaining cheaper to run — the company’s consistent pitch throughout the Command R series was efficiency and reliability for production deployment rather than leaderboard-topping general capability.
With Command R+, Cohere completed its two-tier R-series launch: a lighter, cheaper Command R for high-volume production use, and a larger Command R+ for tasks demanding stronger reasoning and tool use. The pairing reinforced Cohere’s positioning, distinct from OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s consumer-facing chat products, as an enterprise infrastructure supplier competing on cost, retrieval accuracy and cloud-partner distribution rather than public benchmark rankings alone.