Unlock Multi-Modal Embed 4 and Multilingual Agentic RAG with Command A on Azure

Developers and enterprises now have immediate access to state-of-the-art generative and semantic models purpose-built for RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) and agentic AI workflows on Azure AI Foundry to: 

• Deploy high-performance LLMs and semantic search engines directly into production 

• Build faster, more scalable, and multilingual RAG pipelines 

• Leverage models that are optimized for enterprise workloads in finance, healthcare, government, and manufacturing 

Cohere Embed 4: High-Performance Embeddings for Search & RAG 

Accompanying Command A is Cohere’s Embed 4, a cutting-edge embedding model ideal for retrieval-augmented generation pipelines and semantic search. Embed 4 (the latest evolution of Cohere’s Embed series) converts text – and even images – into high-dimensional vector representations that capture semantic meaning. It’s a multi-modal, multilingual embedding model designed to provide recall and relevance in vector search, text classification, and clustering tasks. 

What makes Embed 4 stand out? 

• 100+ Language Support: This model is truly global – it supports well over 100 languages for text embeddings. You can encode queries and documents in many languages (Arabic, Chinese, French, Hindi, etc.) into the same vector space, enabling cross-lingual search out of the box. For example, a question in Spanish can retrieve a relevant document originally in English if their ideas align semantically. 

• Multi-Modal Embeddings: Embed 4 is capable of embedding not only text but also images. This means you can use it for multimodal search scenarios – e.g. indexing both textual content and images and allowing queries across them. Under the hood, the model has an image encoder; the Azure AI Foundry SDK provides an ImageEmbeddingsClient to generate embeddings from images. With this, you could embed a diagram or a screenshot and find text documents that are semantically related to that image’s content. 

• Matryoshka Embeddings (Scalable Dimensions): A novel feature in Cohere’s Embed 4 is Matryoshka Representation Learning, which produces embeddings that can be truncated to smaller sizes with minimal loss in fidelity. In practice, the model can output a high-dimensional vector (e.g. 768 or 1024 dims) but you have the flexibility to use just the first 64, 128, 256, etc. dimensions if needed. These “nested” embeddings mean you can choose a vector size that balances accuracy vs. storage/query speed – smaller vectors save memory and compute while still preserving most of the semantic signal. This is great for enterprise deployments where vector database size and latency are critical. 

• Enterprise Optimizations: Cohere has optimized Embed 4 for production use. It supports int8 quantization and binary embedding output natively, which can drastically reduce storage footprint and speed up similarity search with only minor impact on accuracy (useful for very large indexes). The model is also trained on massive datasets (including domain-specific data) to ensure robust performance on noisy enterprise text. It achieves state-of-the-art results on benchmark evaluations like MTEB, meaning you get retrieval quality on par with or better than other leading embeddings models (OpenAI, Google, etc.). For instance, Cohere’s previous embed model was top-tier on cross-language retrieval tasks and Embed4 further improves on that foundation. 

Cohere Command A: Generative Model for Enterprise AI 

Command A is Cohere’s latest flagship large language model, designed for high-performance text generation in demanding enterprise scenarios. It’s an instruction-tuned, conversational LLM that excels at complex tasks like multi-step reasoning, tool use (function calling), and retrieval-augmented generation. Command A features a massive 111B parameter Transformer architecture with 256K token context length – enabling it to handle extremely large inputs (hundreds of pages of text) in a single prompt without losing coherence. 

Source for above benchmarks : Introducing Command A: Max performance, minimal compute

Some key capabilities of Command A include: 

• Long Context (256K tokens): Using an innovative attention architecture (sliding window + global attention), Command A can ingest up to 256,000 tokens of text in one go. This enables use cases like analyzing lengthy financial reports or entire knowledge bases in a single prompt. 

• Enterprise-Tuned Generation: Command A is optimized for business applications – it’s excellent at instructions, summarization, and especially RAG workflows where it integrates retrieved context and even cites sources to mitigate hallucinations. It supports tool calling (function calling) out-of-the-box so it can interact with external APIs or data sources as part of an Azure AI Agent. 

• Multilingual Proficiency:  Command A is good at multilingual use cases (covering all major business languages, with near leading performance in Japanese, Korean, and German).   

• Efficient Deployment: Despite its size, Command A is engineered for efficiency – it delivers 150% higher throughput than its predecessor (Command R+ 08-2024) and requires only 2× A100/H100 GPUs to run. In practice this means lower latency. It also supports streaming token output, so applications can start receiving the response as it’s generated, keeping interaction latency low. 

Real-World Use Cases for Command A + Embed 4 

With both a powerful generative model and a state-of-the-art embedding model at your fingertips, developers can build advanced AI solutions. Here are some real-world use cases unlocked by Command A and Embed 4 on Azure: 

• Financial Report Summarization (RAG): Imagine ingesting thousands of pages of financial filings, earnings call transcripts, and market research into a vector store. Using Embed 4, you can embed and index all this text. When an analyst asks “What were the key revenue drivers mentioned in ACME Corp’s Q1 2025 report?”, you use the query embedding to retrieve the most relevant passages. Command A (with its 256K context) can then take those passages and generate a concise summary or answer with cited evidence. The model’s long context window means it can consider all retrieved chunks at once, and its enterprise tuning ensures factual, business-appropriate summaries. 

• Legal Research Agent (Tool Use + Multilingual): For example a multinational law firm handling cross-border mergers and acquisitions. They have a vast repository of legal documents in multiple languages. Using Embed 4, they index these documents, creating multilingual embeddings. When a lawyer researches a specific legal precedent related to a merger in Germany, they can query in English. Embed 4 retrieves relevant German documents, and Command A summarizes key points, translates excerpts, and compares legal arguments across jurisdictions. Furthermore, Command A leverages tool calling (utilizing agentic capabilities) to retrieve additional information from external databases, such as company registration details and regulatory filings, integrating this data into its analysis to provide a comprehensive report. 

• Technician Knowledge Assistant (RAG + Multilingual): Think of a utilities company committed to operational excellence, managing a vast network of critical equipment, including power generators, transformers, and distribution lines. They can leverage Command A, integrated with Embed 4, to index a comprehensive repository of equipment manuals, maintenance records, and sensor data in multiple languages. This enables technicians and engineers to access critical knowledge instantly. Technicians can ask questions in their native language about specific equipment issues, and Command A retrieves relevant manuals, troubleshooting guides, and past repair reports. It also guides technicians through complex maintenance procedures step-by-step, ensuring consistency and adherence to best practices. This empowers the company to optimize maintenance processes, improve overall equipment reliability, and enhance communication, ultimately achieving operational excellence. 

• Multimodal Search & Indexing: With Embed 4’s image embedding capability, you can build search systems that go beyond text. For instance, a media company could index their image library by generating embeddings for each image (using Azure’s Image Embeddings client) and also index captions/descriptions. A user could then supply a query image (or a textual description) and retrieve both images and articles that are semantically similar to the query. This is useful for scenarios like finding slides similar to a given diagram, searching scanned invoices by content, or matching user-uploaded photos to reference documents. 

Getting Started: Deploying via Azure AI Foundry 

In Azure AI Foundry, Embed 4 can be used via the Embeddings API to encode text or images into vectors. Each text input is turned into a numeric vector (e.g. 1024-dimension float array) that you can store in a vector database or use for similarity comparisons. The embeddings are normalized for cosine similarity by default. You can also take advantage of Azure’s vector index or Azure Cognitive Search to directly build vector search on top of these model outputs. 

Image Source : Introducing Embed 4: Multimodal search for business

One of the biggest benefits of using Azure AI Foundry is the ease of deployment for these models. Cohere’s Command A and Embed 4 are available in the model catalog – you can find their model cards and deploy them in just a few clicks. Azure Foundry supports serverless API endpoints for these models, meaning Microsoft hosts the inference infrastructure and scales it for you (with pay-as-you-go billing).  

Integration with Azure AI Agent Service: If you’re building an AI agent (a system that can orchestrate models and tools to perform tasks), Azure AI Agent Service makes it easy to incorporate these models. In the Agent Service, you can simply reference the deployed model by name as the agent’s reasoning LLM. For example, you could specify an agent that uses CohereCommandA as its model, and add tools like Azure Cognitive Search. The agent can then handle user requests by, say, using a Search tool (powered by Embed 4 vector index) and then passing the results to Command A for answer formulation – all managed by the Azure Agent framework. This lets you build production-grade agentic AI workflows that leverage Cohere’s models with minimal plumbing. In short, Azure provides the glue to connect Command A + Embed 4 + Tools into a coherent solution. 

Try Command A and Embed 4 today on Azure AI Foundry 

The availability of Cohere’s Command A and Embed 4 on Azure AI Foundry empowers developers to build the next generation of intelligent apps on a fully managed platform. You can now easily deploy a 256K-context LLM that rivals the best in the industry, alongside a high-performance embedding model that plugs into your search and retrieval pipelines. Whether it’s summarizing lengthy documents with cited facts, powering a multilingual enterprise assistant, enabling multimodal search experiences, or orchestrating complex tool-using agents – these models open up a world of possibilities. 

Azure AI Foundry makes it simple to integrate these capabilities into your solutions, with the security, compliance, and scalability of Azure’s cloud. We encourage you to try out Command A and Embed 4 in your own projects. Spin them up from the Azure model catalog, use the provided SDK examples to get started, and explore how they can elevate your applications’ intelligence. With Cohere’s models on Azure, you have cutting-edge AI at your fingertips, ready to deploy in production. We’re excited to see what you build with them!