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Nick Frosst

Cofounder and President, Cohere

Search every verified Nick Frosst interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Nick Frosst, co-founder and president of Cohere, has been discussing the company's enterprise-focused strategy and its approach to AI sovereignty. He stated that Cohere is "only B2B" and aims to make models that are "efficient to deploy" in private customer environments rather than pursuing the largest possible model or building artificial general intelligence. Frosst described Cohere's model deployment as one where customers control the technology after purchase, saying "we can't shut off access" because it is deployed in their environment. He also commented on geopolitical risks in AI, stating that "if your entire technology is coming from a single country and that country decides that every now and again they're going to shut off access to you, that's not a foundation you can build on." Frosst has also spoken about Cohere's approach to open-source models, noting the company released an Apache 2.0 model and describing the model itself as "by no means the extent" of what Cohere provides. He defined sovereignty as "agency and autonomy" that can apply at multiple levels including a person, company, or country. Frosst acknowledged that Cohere has raised capital from outside Canada but said the company has "always been here" and "will always stay here." He expressed support for requiring Canadian pension funds to invest in Canadian companies, saying "it's obvious" and that "successful countries" do this.

Recent appearances

  • Cohere's Nick Frosst: Why Smaller AI Models Win Enterprise | Make it Click

    June 24, 2026 · 📺 Borderless AI Media Lab

    Nick Frosst is a co-founder of Cohere, the Toronto-based enterprise LLM company valued at $7 billion. In this episode of Make it Click, Willson sits down with Nick to talk about why Cohere bets exclusively on B2B, how on-prem deployments protect customer data in regulated industries, and why the consumer AI race has economics that don’t add up. Along the way, Nick shares his contrarian take on AGI hype, AI sovereignty in a shifting geopolitical landscape, and why he’d tell an 18-year-old not to start a company just yet. Outside of AI, Nick is also the frontman of indie pop-rock band Good Kid.…

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  • Did the Anthropic model ban just prove Cohere right?

    June 16, 2026 · 📺 BetaKit

    #ai #canada #anthropic #cohere #startups “If your entire technology is coming from a single country, and that country decides that every now and again they’re going to shut off access to you, that’s not a foundation you can build on.” The US government just ordered Anthropic to ban access to its most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Seems like now is a good time to talk about sovereign AI. ‪@CohereAI‬ co-founder Nick Frosst joins to discuss how Canada’s AI champion is built different than the other frontier LLM providers, how Star Trek informs the type of AI future the company is…

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  • Sovereignty Stack — Cohere, Kepler, Dominion Dynamics, Build Canada

    June 03, 2026 · 📺 Toronto Tech Week

    Lucy Hargreaves (Build Canada) moderates a Homecoming panel with Mina Mitry (Kepler), Eliot Pence (Dominion Dynamics), and Nick Frosst (Cohere) on what sovereignty actually means for Canada. Sovereignty isn't protectionism — it's control and freedom of action. The bottleneck isn't capital or talent — it's a 16.5-year procurement cycle and a government that won't be its own first customer. CHAPTERS 0:00 What Sovereignty Actually Means 2:35 Dominion & the OODA Loop 3:33 Control and Freedom of Action 6:00 Cohere's Bet on Open Weights 9:17 Protectionism vs. Globally Competitive 12:42 The 16.5-Yea…

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  • Cohere Co-Founder Nick Frosst on Enterprise AI and Sovereignty

    April 27, 2026 · 📺 AI Chat (Audio)

    Jaeden sits down with Nick Frosst, co-founder of Cohere, to discuss the company's focus on enterprise AI, foundational models, and AI sovereignty. Nick shares why Cohere prioritizes practical and secure solutions over chasing AGI, and how businesses can avoid common mistakes when adopting AI technology. Watch on YouTube:    • Cohere Co-Founder Nick Frosst on Enterpris...   Conor's AI Course: https://www.ai-mindset.ai/courses Get the top 80+ AI Models for $8.99 at AI Box: https://aibox.ai Check out Cohere: https://cohere.com/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Cohere and AI Background…

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  • Cohere Co-Founder Nick Frosst on Enterprise AI and Sovereignty

    April 27, 2026 · 📺 AI Applied (Audio)

    Jaeden sits down with Nick Frosst, co-founder of Cohere, to discuss the company's focus on enterprise AI, foundational models, and AI sovereignty. Nick shares why Cohere prioritizes practical and secure solutions over chasing AGI, and how businesses can avoid common mistakes when adopting AI technology. Watch on YouTube:    • Cohere Co-Founder Nick Frosst on Enterpris...   Conor's AI Course: https://www.ai-mindset.ai/courses Get the top 80+ AI Models for $8.99 at AI Box: https://aibox.ai Check out Cohere: https://cohere.com/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Cohere and AI Background 03:31 Coh…

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  • Cohere Co Founder Nick Frosst on Enterprise AI and Sovereignty

    April 27, 2026 · 📺 AI Chat

    Jaeden sits down with Nick Frosst, co-founder of Cohere, to discuss the company's focus on enterprise AI, foundational models, and AI sovereignty. Nick shares why Cohere prioritizes practical and secure solutions over chasing AGI, and how businesses can avoid common mistakes when adopting AI technology. Conor's AI Course: https://www.ai-mindset.ai/courses Get the top 80+ AI Models for $8.99 at AI Box: https://aibox.ai Check out Cohere: https://cohere.com/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Cohere and AI Background 03:31 Cohere's Unique Approach to AI for Enterprises 06:20 Real-World Applications…

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  • Cohere Co-Founder Nick Frosst on Enterprise AI and Sovereignty

    April 27, 2026 · 📺 AI Applied

    Jaeden sits down with Nick Frosst, co-founder of Cohere, to discuss the company's focus on enterprise AI, foundational models, and AI sovereignty. Nick shares why Cohere prioritizes practical and secure solutions over chasing AGI, and how businesses can avoid common mistakes when adopting AI technology. Conor's AI Course: https://www.ai-mindset.ai/courses Get the top 80+ AI Models for $8.99 at AI Box: https://aibox.ai Check out Cohere: https://cohere.com/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Cohere and AI Background 03:31 Cohere's Unique Approach to AI for Enterprises 06:20 Real-World Applications…

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  • Glenda Crisp & Nick Frosst | Fireside Chat on AI Sovereignty and Building Beyond Silicon Valley

    March 06, 2026 · 📺 Vector Institute

    Discover why one of the world's leading AI companies chose Canada over Silicon Valley. Nick Frosst, Co-founder of Cohere, joins Vector CEO Glenda Crisp for a candid conversation about building transformative AI companies in Canada, translating research into commercial impact, and what "AI sovereignty" means in practice. Why This Matters: "We like Canada. It's a great place to start a company." As disenchantment with Silicon Valley's vision for AI grows, Canadian firms have an unprecedented opportunity to lead. This fireside chat explores how Cohere is proving that world-class AI companies ca…

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  • Is Cohere the Next AI Powerhouse? | First Time Founders with Ed Elson

    March 01, 2026 · 📺 The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway

    Today in First Time Founders, Ed Elson speaks with Nick Frosst, a co-founder of Cohere. They discuss why the company chose an enterprise-only strategy, how he sees the future of AI unfolding, and whether an IPO is on the horizon. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:07 Interview with Nick Frosst 01:18 What is Cohere? 03:37 Why are there so little companies building foundational AI models? 05:16 How did you get involved in Cohere? 07:18 What did you learn from Geoffrey Hinton? 10:40 Was ChatGPT the main breakthrough for AI? 16:01 What made AI more attractive to big corporations? 20:26 Will there be othe…

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  • Building the Future of Enterprise AI Globally with Nick Frosst, Co-Founder at Cohere

    February 19, 2026 · 📺 Inovia Capital

    In our Canadian Roots. Global Mindset. campaign, Cohere's Nick Frosst shares why they chose to build here, how principled ...

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  • Why Cohere Is Betting on Enterprise AI, Not AGI

    February 17, 2026 · 📺 Eye on AI

    This episode is sponsored by tastytrade. Trade stocks, options, futures, and crypto in one platform with low commissions and zero commission on stocks and crypto. Built for traders who think in probabilities, tastytrade offers advanced analytics, risk tools, and an AI-powered Search feature. Learn more at https://tastytrade.com/ In this episode of Eye on AI, Nick Frosst, Co-Founder of Cohere and former Google Brain researcher, explains why Cohere is betting on enterprise AI instead of chasing AGI. While much of the AI industry is focused on artificial general intelligence, Cohere is build…

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  • PRIMARY NYC SUMMIT 2025– Nick Frosst & Yevgeny Gelfand

    September 18, 2025 · 📺 Primary Venture Partners

    Watch on YouTube ↗

Notable quotes

“I think the world is really looking around at like AI sovereignty and thinking, hey, this is a really foundational technology. How can we make sure that this technology is being deployed and built in a way that empowers the people that are using it, empowers the actual people who are using it, the companies that are using it in the countries where it's deployed. And especially these days, people are interested in hav”

“we're not trying to build digital people, you know, like we're not trying to build AGI, whatever that means. Like we're trying to make this technology useful as it is. And that's a very different goal than somebody than some of the companies that say like, you know, we're we're going to be profitable when we make a digital god and then we ask it how to make money.”

“if your entire technology is coming from a single country and that country decides that every now and again they're going to shut off access to you, that's not that's not a foundation you can build on.”

“We've raised a lot of money from outside of Canada, the vast majority of it, but we have had lead investors who have often been Canadian. We've been really lucky to work with PSP, with Radical, with Anovia, with a bunch of great Canadian investors, who are often ahead of the curve. There's a great investment community here and there is a lot of capital, but a lot of it is deployed elsewhere. And so, even as a Canadia”

“We have trained competitive models... with 1/100th of the compute of our competitors. 1/100th. And that's because the team that team we have is like they're great and they're they're they're persevering. They're brilliant, they're creative, they're collaborative.”

“We have a business model that is financially viable now. And that's just a commitment to pragmatism and utility that we have as people like that that's just part of who we are and that's part of our focus.”

Other executives at Cohere

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