Announcing Cohere Command R+, now available on Azure

Update : The latest version of Command R and Command R+ released by Cohere on 09/27 is now available on Azure AI Studio and on GH (Command R , Command R+)]

Today, we’re pleased to announce a new collaboration between Cohere and Microsoft to integrate Cohere’s latest LLM - Command R+ into the Azure AI model catalog as part of the Models as a Service (MaaS) offering. This latest addition furthers our commitment to enriching the toolkit available to Azure AI users, empowering them to create advanced, user-centric generative AI applications that prioritize security, compliance, adaptability, and scalability. 

With Azure AI, we bring a comprehensive selection of frontier and open models, enabling customers to choose the models that make most sense for their solutions. We have expanded our model collection by curating our own AI models and announcing new partnerships with industry-leading generative AI model providers by 7X in the past 6 months. The Azure AI model catalog now offers more than 1,600 foundation models (LLMs and SLMs) from Databricks, Deci AI, Hugging Face,  Meta, Microsoft Research, Mistral AI, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Stability AI – and now Cohere - enabling Azure customers to choose the best model for their use case.  

Cohere CEO and Co-Founder Aidan Gomez, emphasized the importance of meeting customers where their data lives: "We're at a pivotal moment in AI, where collaborations between leaders like Cohere and Microsoft can truly shape the future of enterprise-grade AI. Command R+ represents not just a technological leap but a commitment to ethical, scalable, and impactful AI solutions,” he said. “The availability of Command R+ on Azure amplifies our ability to scale advanced AI capabilities to enterprises globally, ensuring that the future of AI is not only innovative but also inclusive and secure. This collaboration is a testament to our shared vision of making AI more accessible and effective for businesses worldwide." 

A glimpse into Command R+ 

Command R+ is part of the Enterprise Generative suite of offerings from Cohere. It is highly optimized for retrieval augmented generation (RAG), balancing efficiency with accuracy to enable enterprises to move from proof of concept into production-grade AI. Command R+ is built for enterprises that plan to leverage their internal data and documents for building tailored and accurate language models. When paired with Cohere Embed and Rerank which will be available in the model catalog soon, Command R+ offers leading accuracy for advanced AI applications requiring information from documents and enterprise data sources. The model outputs come with clear citations that mitigate the risk of hallucinations and enable surfacing additional context from the source materials.  

Command R+ also boasts fluency in 10 key business languages including proficiency in Asian languages such as Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. With these advantages, customers can build AI apps such as knowledge assistants, customer support chatbots, and other advanced applications that leverage proprietary data and serve diverse people, organizations, and markets across a variety of languages.  

Unlocking Possibilities on Azure AI Studio 

Command R+'s collaboration with tools in Azure AI Studio, such as Azure AI Content Safety, Azure AI Search, and prompt flow elevates responsible and efficient AI practices. Here are key benefits that underscore the seamless integration and robust support system offered by Command R+ in collaboration with Azure: 

• Enhanced Security and Compliance: Azure places a strong emphasis on data privacy and security, adopting Microsoft's comprehensive security protocols to protect customer data. With Command R+ on Azure AI Studio, enterprises can operate confidently, knowing their data remains within the secure bounds of the Azure cloud, thereby enhancing privacy and operational efficiency. 
• Content Safety Integration: Customers can integrate Cohere models with content safety features available through Azure AI Content Safety, enabling additional responsible AI practices. This integration facilitates the development of safer AI applications, ensuring content generated or processed is monitored for compliance and ethical standards. 
• Streamlined Evaluation of LLM flows: Azure AI's prompt flow supports evaluation flows, enabling developers to effectively assess the alignment of LLMs’ outputs with specified criteria and objectives through metrics calculation. This feature is valuable for workflows developed with Command R+; it facilitates a thorough evaluation using metrics like groundedness, which measures the relevance and accuracy of the model's responses based on the input sources when implementing a RAG pattern.  
• Simplified Deployment and Inference: By deploying Cohere models through MaaS with pay-as-you-go inference APIs, developers can easily take advantage of the power of Command R+ without the hassle of managing underlying infrastructure in their Azure environment.  

These features demonstrate Azure's commitment to offering an environment where enterprises can harness the full potential of AI technologies like Command R+ efficiently and responsibly, driving innovation while maintaining high standards of security and compliance. 

Leading the Charge in Scalable, Intelligent Enterprise AI Systems  

As we continue to expand our model catalog and forge new partnerships, our focus remains on empowering businesses worldwide to harness the transformative power of AI to build intelligent systems that understand, communicate, and innovate.  

Read more about Command R+ in the Cohere blog .  Go to AI Studio model catalog to get started on Command R+.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible in Azure AI. 

FAQs

• What does it cost to use Cohere models on Azure?
  • You are billed based on the number of prompt and completions tokens. You can review the pricing on the Cohere offer in the Marketplace offer details tab when deploying the model. You can also find the pricing on the Azure Marketplace:
    • Command R+
    • Command R
    • Embed v3-Multilingual
    • Embed-v3-English
• Do I need GPU capacity in my Azure subscription to use Cohere?
  • No, you do not need GPU capacity. Cohere model is offered as an API. 
•  Is Command R+ available in Azure Machine Learning Studio?
  • Yes, Command R+ is available in the model catalog in both Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning Studio.
• Command R+ is listed on the Azure Marketplace. Can I purchase and use Command R+ directly from Azure Marketplace?
  • Azure Marketplace enables the purchase and billing of Command R+, but the purchase experience can only be accessed through the model catalog. Attempting to purchase Command R+ from the Marketplace will redirect you to Azure AI Studio.
• Given that Command R+ is billed through the Azure Marketplace, does it retire my Azure consumption commitment (aka MACC)?
  • Yes, Command R+ is an “Azure benefit eligible” Marketplace offer, which indicates MACC eligibility. Learn more about MACC here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/azure-consumption-commitment-benefit
• Is my inference data shared with Cohere?
  • No, Microsoft does not share the content of any inference request or response data with Cohere. Your data, including the data generated through your organization’s use of Models as a Service on Azure – such as prompts and responses – are kept private and are not disclosed to third parties. Microsoft also doesn't use prompts and outputs to train nor improve any MaaS models. Additionally, all MaaS models are stateless, which means no prompts or outputs are stored in the models. You can learn more here.  
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• Are there rate limits for the Cohere models on Azure?
  • Cohere models come with 200k tokens per minute and 1k requests per minute limit. Reach out to Azure customer support if this doesn’t suffice.
• Are Cohere models region specific?
  • Cohere model API endpoints can be created in AI Studio projects to Azure Machine Learning workspaces in EastUS2 and Sweden Central. If you want to use Cohere models in prompt flow in project or workspaces in other regions, you can use the API and key as a connection to prompt flow manually. Essentially, you can use the API from any Azure region once you create it EastUS2 and Sweden Central.
• Can I fine-tune Cohere models?
  • Not yet, stay tuned…
• Can I use MaaS models in any Azure subscription types? 
  • Customers can use MaaS models in all Azure subsection types with a valid payment method, except for the CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) program. Free or trial Azure subscriptions are not supported.