He built Cohere into a $5.5B AI startup; How to Win in AI; & Why LLMs won't lead to AGI. | Nick Frosst, Co-Founder of Cohere

In this episode, I sit down with Nick Frosst, Co-Founder of Cohere, the $5.5B AI startup that’s targeting the enterprise landscape.

We go through the origin story of Cohere, the challenges of building foundational models, and why he believes large language models (LLMs) won’t lead to artificial general intelligence (AGI). We also explore the fierce competition in AI, what sets Cohere apart, and Nick’s advice for founders building in AI today.


Why you should listen

• LLMs are powerful but have clear limitations and won't lead to AGI.
• Why AI startups need to start with real problems vs leveraging AI for its own sake
• Why ChatGPT was as much of a UI/UX revolution than a technological one
• What tech founders need to do to win in AI

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:21) AI Expectations
(00:06:05) A Unique and New Moment
(00:09:38) Resource Intensive Industry
(00:12:03) Zero to One
(00:15:07) Base Language Model to Chat Model
(00:17:15) Carving Out a Niche
(00:21:03) Open Source
(00:24:00) The Limits of LLMs
(00:26:18) Agents
(00:29:30) AGI
(00:34:04) A Little Bit of Data
(00:39:05) Speed of Development
(00:40:47) Finding True Product Market Fit
(00:43:37) One Piece of Advice

Send me a message to let me know what you think!