North Cohere and the Future of Intelligent Agents  ## Metadata - Author: [[Hard Fork AI]] - Full Title: North Cohere and the Future of Intelligent Agents - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/53172d05-afbf-4d5e-8474-b5b50f729739 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Host's Canadian Bias And Branding** - Jaeden Schafer admits a soft spot for Cohere because it's Canadian and he is too. - He praises the 'North' and 'Compass' naming as clever branding. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer I will also say I have a soft spot for them because they are a Canadian company and I am originally Canadian. I live in America now. So always, always happy to cover a Canadian company. One funny thing I'll say is I do think their branding is pretty funny. Their new AI agent platform is called North. And, you know, of course, they're up north. So I think that's some pretty good Canadian branding for you. All right, before we get into this, I wanted to mention if you want to try different models from Cohere or any of the other top AI companies, I have a startup called AIbox.ai. And basically, I have the top 40 AI models, all for a $20 subscription. You get access to everything on one platform. And we have a whole bunch of models from Cohere. We have their R model and their R plus model. We also have Microsoft, Meta, Quinn, NVIDIA, Cohere, Anthropic, OpenAI. Like we have everybody else as well. A bunch of cool audio and a bunch of image models. ([Time 0:00:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a172df19-5ddb-447c-9903-70c784af925e)) - **Agents Handle Single Tasks Today** - Jaeden Schafer says agents currently automate single tasks, not whole jobs. - He expects agents will grow into broader employee‑like roles. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer So the first thing I want to say is obviously these AI agent, like these tool platforms, the idea is to automate your workflows, automate things that you're doing. That's basically what they're doing. I think there's like this concept with agents that at some point we're gonna be like, hey, you're a marketing agent, like make my, you know, make my sales go crazy. And you know, the agent runs away and pulls off a miraculous miracle. I think less and less, this is where people are believing these agents are going to be. And more and more, it's going to be basically giving it tasks to accomplish. You figured out how to write the perfect newsletter and send it and the whole workflow that goes into that. And so you basically train the agent, make his automation that can go do that task for you. It's kind of interesting because there's two concepts with agents. One is that they're like an employee. I think right now we're like, we'll get there, I think. But right now we're not there. I think right now we're at the, a task. So if an employee does 10 different tasks, you would take one of those tasks and give it to an agent. That's kind of what we're calling agents now. I think in the future, it's going to be the agents, like an employee that can do all your things you train it to do. ([Time 0:01:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fb337b35-47bf-44d3-984c-334ce5b11f2f)) - **Private On‑Prem Agent Deployment** - Cohere's North can run on private on‑prem or air‑gapped infrastructure. - Jaeden Schafer says this keeps customer data behind company firewalls. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer So this isn't a deployment where you're accessing their API. This is going to be on your own servers, your own firewalls protected. And that's kind of what coheres. Basically, I think it's the angle they're taking so that they can stay competitive in the market. This is what they said. This is a co-founder, Nick Frost of Frost. That's the greatest last name of a Canadian. I love that. He's a co-founder of Cohere. He said, LLMs are only as good as the data they have access to. If we want LLMs to be as useful as possible, they have to have access to useful data. And that means they need to be deployed in the customer's environment. He's kind of referencing the fact that if these companies want this to be really useful, you need to deploy them on your own servers, give them access to all of your company data. And then when you ask it questions, it's actually looking at your data to give you results and responses. It's very customized and it's stuff that you can't obviously get publicly on something like ChatGPT. So instead of using enterprise cloud platforms like Azure or AWS, you can actually install North on your organization's private infrastructure so that it never sees or interacts With your customer's data. North can run on an organization's on-premise infrastructure, their hybrid cloud, their VPCs, or air-gapped environments. ([Time 0:03:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/354e3679-19a3-473c-9de0-a9b6a38f8886)) - **Data Access Dictates LLM Usefulness** - Nick Frost: 'LLMs are only as good as the data they have access to.' - He argues deployment in customer environments unlocks utility. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer This is what they said. This is a co-founder, Nick Frost of Frost. That's the greatest last name of a Canadian. I love that. He's a co-founder of Cohere. He said, LLMs are only as good as the data they have access to. If we want LLMs to be as useful as possible, they have to have access to useful data. And that means they need to be deployed in the customer's environment. He's kind of referencing the fact that if these companies want this to be really useful, you need to deploy them on your own servers, give them access to all of your company data. And then when you ask it questions, it's actually looking at your data to give you results and responses. ([Time 0:03:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5128ffb9-333b-4bf4-b281-a4a0b27db4c7)) - **Enterprise-Grade Security Controls** - North adds granular access control, autonomy policies, and red‑teaming. - Jaeden Schafer notes these aim to meet GDPR, SOC 2, and ISO 27001. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer He said, quote, we can deploy literally on a GPU in a closet that they might have somewhere. Basically, they claim that they also include security protocols like granular access control, agent autonomy policies, continuous red teaming, and third-party security tests. So basically, it meets international compliance, GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 27001. I'm not sure what country that is required by. And I'm sure some people are yelling at me that it's like a super common thing I just wasn't aware of. But in any case, this is pretty exciting. ([Time 0:04:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/90741b89-0146-4ba9-bc5f-85bd4d5c9761)) - **Major Pilots Signal Enterprise Interest** - Cohere piloted North with RBC, Dell, LG, Ensemble Health Partners, and Palantir. - Jaeden Schafer uses these pilots to show enterprise demand. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer So far, Cohere, by the way, is a background on the company. They've raised about $970 million. Most recently, they had a $5.5 billion valuation. So they're growing. They're still cruising along. They said that they already piloted North with a bunch of customers. So RBC, Dell, LG, Ensemble Health Partners, and also Palantir. So there's some big players that are using this. It is a cool tool. It basically mirrors many AI agent platforms right out of the box. Its main feature is chat and search, which basically lets you get answers to your customer support queries. You can summarize meeting transcripts, you can write marketing copy, you can access information from internal resources and the web. ([Time 0:05:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bebd4810-c980-4fe9-82ad-68331d287e50)) - **Generative Tools Beyond Q&A** - North provides chat, search, summaries and creates tables, docs, and slides. - Jaeden Schafer says this shifts agents from answering to doing work. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer It basically mirrors many AI agent platforms right out of the box. Its main feature is chat and search, which basically lets you get answers to your customer support queries. You can summarize meeting transcripts, you can write marketing copy, you can access information from internal resources and the web. So these are things that we have seen other places, but they're also basically trying to make this more focused on the enterprise and what they're doing in-house and not giving it like Access to, you know, they're not running this on their own server. You're running this on your personal company server. It also has citations and quote unquote reasoning chain of thought. So an employee could audit or verify the output that is actually there, right? It will show the steps that it went through to get an answer. So if you're saying like, hey, you know, which customers in our database had the most problematic transactions, it would give you a list and then you can go look through how it actually Came to that conclusion, right? So I think this is really interesting. The chat and search function are basically powered by Cohere. They have their own LLN model. We should go try on AI Box if you're curious on how that works and what it looks like. Command, they have a bunch of generative AI models. Compass is its multimodal search tech stack that they've created. It's so funny. I love this. Compass North. This is great. This is very, very Canadian. So this is what they said about it. They said, it goes beyond just Q&A and gets into doing work for you. North has a bunch of asset creation. It can make tables. It can make documents. It can make slideshows. A bunch of market research, or it can do a bunch of market research. ([Time 0:05:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/caa64c4f-8256-465f-8949-62f86f3c001d)) - **Acquired Autogrid To Boost Market Research** - Cohere acquired Vancouver startup Autogrid to add market‑research automation. - Jaeden Schafer presents the buy as a fast way to expand capabilities. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer They said, it goes beyond just Q&A and gets into doing work for you. North has a bunch of asset creation. It can make tables. It can make documents. It can make slideshows. A bunch of market research, or it can do a bunch of market research. I think it is worth noting that Cohere actually acquired a company back in May called Autogrid. So this was a Vancouver-based company. And basically, they develop enterprise tools for automating high-level market research. So I think this is kind of cool that they went and acquired a company and basically used that to kind of push themselves forward and become more competitive for their customers. ([Time 0:07:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a3920408-e4f1-42d2-8ba2-fe8e382125f8)) - **Connects To Existing Workplace Tools** - North integrates with Gmail, Slack, Salesforce, Outlook, and MCP servers. - Jaeden Schafer says these links let agents act inside workflows. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer So this was a Vancouver-based company. And basically, they develop enterprise tools for automating high-level market research. So I think this is kind of cool that they went and acquired a company and basically used that to kind of push themselves forward and become more competitive for their customers. Like a lot of AI agent platforms, it can connect to existing workplace tools. So things like Gmail, Slack, Salesforce, Outlook, all of those, it can integrate with all of them. It also integrates with MCP, Model Context Protocol servers to basically access a bunch of industry specific or in-house applications that a company might have. ([Time 0:07:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/417d177b-8374-4f03-8bb8-502dda2ed441)) - **Enterprise Tools Over Winning Model Race** - Jaeden Schafer says Cohere bets on enterprise tooling rather than claiming the top LLM. - He warns open models plus similar tools could compete. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer I will say probably not for now. I think this is probably a really useful tool, especially for companies. I don't think it's competitive as a standalone product. This is my critical after giving them their praises for their clever names and being Canadian. But I don't think this is actually a super competitive product as a standalone product. And I think this is evidenced by the fact that they're not competing head on with OpenAI and a lot of other players trying to have like the best model. They're basically trying to say, look, we have a really decent model and we have a whole bunch of really great tools for enterprise to use. Is this a bad approach? Not at all. I think this is a great approach. They're solving a problem that people have. I just don't think it's like, it's not something that everyone has to use or try because it's probably not number one. Now, is it good at certain tasks, better at maybe tone or better at style or better at doing different things? Yeah, I think it is. But I also think it's probably getting most of its lift and usage. It's most of its valuation based on the software tools that have been basically built around their LLM. And I think it almost calls into question, unless they're about to train and release like some new insane LLM, they're not number one. And so it calls into question, in my opinion, when you have OpenAI dropping like an open model, like they just dropped yesterday, it almost calls into question, like what if any company Went and took that open model, ran it themselves and built all the tools that Cohere has and competed with them without having to train their own model. It's kind of interesting. So I think Cohere is going to have to spend some more investment to make sure their model is up to par and is kind of top notch. ([Time 0:08:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/96d4c680-2945-4779-b124-610923135ef6))