Vodafone puts money where mouth is with $15M Cohere investment

　　Software allowing a network to support many more customers without the need for additional spectrum or new basestations could be worth billions of dollars to the average big telco. That explains why Vodafone has long admired Cohere Technologies and its Universal Spectrum Multiplier (USM). Previous trials in the medieval Spanish city of Ciudad Real – not the friendliest environment for a wireless signal – boosted 5G capacity by 50%, the operator claimed in early 2024. It has followed that up with a $15 million investment in the US company, according to a recent UK filing.

　　Lodged with Companies House, a UK government library of company financial reports, it was first spotted and reported on by Telco Titans and takes the form of a convertible security, which Vodafone anticipates exchanging for equity "at the next funding round." The investment was made through Vodafone Ventures in July, but the move was not publicized before January 5, when the operator's venture capital arm filed accounts for the fiscal year ending in March 2025. Details of the funding for Cohere form part of a section on "events after the reporting period."

　　The attractions of Cohere have been covered extensively by this publication. Operators have spent billions of dollars to acquire spectrum and build 5G networks. Returns on that investment have been disappointing, and yet the gigabytes carried over mobile networks have continued to pile up, even if the growth rate has declined. Boosting spectral efficiency through USM sounds more economical than acquiring new frequency licenses or deploying more advanced 5G radios.

　　An obvious worry

　　Why, then, is Cohere not already a multi-billion-dollar business? For all the plaudits it has received from Vodafone and other large operators, Cohere is an obvious worry for the vendors of 5G radio access network (RAN) products. Despite long-running telco efforts to foment competition, that market is still dominated by a few giant companies whose cooperation is needed for Cohere to thrive. Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung account for almost all RAN business not captured by Chinese vendors, which Cohere cannot deal with – even if it wanted to – because of US government restrictions.

　　So far, however, the Nordic and South Korean vendors have looked unwilling to accommodate Cohere. This could be done through direct integration of Cohere's software with 5G network products, which has clearly not happened. The main alternative for a telco is to use the traditional vendors' products in tandem with Cohere's xApp, a type of application supported by a network platform dubbed a RAN intelligent controller (RIC). Yet Ericsson and Samsung are resistant to xApps, preferring an alternative called an rApp.

　　The chief difference is that an rApp – designed for a "non-real-time" RIC – takes longer to perform tasks than an xApp, with its "near-real-time" capability. Ericsson has previously downplayed this difference and argued that xApps may be unnecessary. But USM is unavailable in rApp form. Some critics have an alternative take. Ericsson, they say, simply doesn't want to expose its most valuable technology to third-party innovation when this could ultimately hurt product sales.

　　This still, of course, leaves Nokia. In 2023, the Finnish vendor flagged trials of the E2 interface that opens network products to xApps. But there has been no visible progress since then, and the company seemed to acknowledge this in late 2025. "xApps has been of less interest lately," said Tommi Uitto, the former head of Nokia's mobile networks business group, during a press event in September.

　　The possibility the kit vendors are unimpressed by Cohere cannot be dismissed. But if that is the case, they have arrived at fundamentally different conclusions from Vodafone and other telcos. Bell Canada and Australia's Telstra are among the other operators to have conducted trials of USM and expressed satisfaction with the results. Both have also made investments in Cohere.

　　Pulling a Facebook

　　The risk for admiring telcos is that one of the big vendors pulls a Facebook. Almost 12 years ago, the social media giant lavished $19 billion on a takeover of WhatsApp purely to eliminate any threat its messaging service might pose. A scenario in which an established kit vendor buys Cohere only to snuff it out is not inconceivable. It could, alternatively, gain a serious competitive advantage over every other vendor if USM is as good as Vodafone claims.

　　As small as $15 million is for a group that generated sales of €37.4 billion (US$43.5 billion) in its last full fiscal year, the Vodafone investment looks interesting in the context of such concerns as well as recent comments about Cohere by Paco Pignatelli, the head of open RAN for Vodafone. "I think the important point is that now we need to see that there is an integration with a supplier," he told Light Reading in November. "I think it's important to get one, the first one, because the improvements are so relevant that it will motivate the others to follow the same path."

　　Pignatelli clearly wants USM to be supported by multiple suppliers, not just one. And besides investing in Cohere, Vodafone last year settled on the suppliers it will use for the next stage of its 5G rollout across Europe. Outside the UK, where its VodafoneThree joint venture has opted for a mixture of Ericsson and Nokia, it appears to have awarded most new work to Samsung. But Ericsson has acknowledged its former participation in USM trials, without saying if these were done with Vodafone. Meanwhile, Cohere's recent field trials with Bell Canada, which divides RAN work between Ericsson and Nokia, involved one of the current suppliers, according to Cohere's representatives. It was not Ericsson, the Swedish company subsequently told Light Reading.

　　Vodafone's $15 million move is significant for another reason, too. As already noted by Telco Titans, it represented the first investment by Vodafone Ventures in a totally new business since 2018, when satellite company AST SpaceMobile was added to the portfolio. Including Cohere, just ten companies are on the list. Vodafone's technology executives have had a lot to say about Cohere in the last couple of years. The operator now seems to be putting its money where its mouth is.