20VC: Cohere Founder on How Cohere Compete with OpenAI and Anthropic $BNs | Why Counties Should Fund Their Own Models & the Need for Model Sovereignty | How Sam Altman Has Done a Disservice to AI with Nick Frosst

20VC: Cohere Founder on How Cohere Compete with OpenAI and Anthropic $BNs | Why Counties Should Fund Their Own Models & the Need for Model Sovereignty | How Sam Altman Has Done a Disservice to AI with Nick Frosst

Author: Harry Stebbings September 1, 2025 Duration: 1:07:50
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
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Nick Frosst is a Canadian AI researcher and entrepreneur, best known as co-founder of Cohere, the enterprise-focused LLM. Cohere has raised over $900 million, most recently a $500 million round, bringing its valuation to $6.8 billion. Under his leadership, Cohere hit $100M in ARR. Prior to founding Cohere, Nick was a researcher at Google Brain and a protégé of Geoffrey Hinton.

AGENDA: 

00:00 – Biggest lessons from Geoff Hinton at Google Brain?

02:10 – Did Google completely sleep at the wheel and miss ChatGPT?

05:45 – Is data or compute the real bottleneck in AI's future?

07:20 – Does GPT5 Prove That Scaling Laws are BS?

13:30 – Are AI benchmarks just total BS?

17:00 – Would Cohere spend $5M on a single AI researcher?

19:40 – What is nonsense in AI that everyone is talking about?

25:30 – What is no one talking about in AI that everyone should be talking about?

33:00 – How do Cohere compete with OpenAI and Anthropic's billions?

44:30 – Why does being American actually hurt tech companies today?

45:10 – Should countries fund their own models? Is model sovereignty the future?

52:00 – Why has Sam Altman actually done a disservice to AI?

 


Hosted by Harry Stebbings, The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) pulls back the curtain on the high-stakes worlds of venture capital and startup building. Each episode is a compact, twenty-minute dive into the minds shaping the future of technology. You’ll hear candid conversations with legendary investors, the very individuals who fund and guide the next generation of companies, featuring voices like Sequoia's Doug Leone and Benchmark's Bill Gurley. Beyond the capital, this podcast dedicates time to the founders themselves. Weekly, Stebbings sits down with transformative entrepreneurs such as Spotify's Daniel Ek, LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, and Snowflake's Frank Slootman, unpacking the real journeys behind their iconic companies. The format is direct and focused, cutting straight to the core insights on funding strategies, pitch dynamics, and the personal philosophies that drive success. Tuning into this podcast means gaining an unfiltered perspective from both sides of the table, all delivered in a concise and accessible style that fits into your day.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Podcast Episodes
20VC: Cerebras CEO on Why Raise $1BN and Delay the IPO | NVIDIA Showing Signs They Are Worried About Growth | Concentration of Value in Mag7: Will the AI Train Come to a Halt | Can the US Supply the Energy for AI with Andrew Feldman [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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Duration: 54:15
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Duration: 1:27:19
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Duration: 59:19
Jesse Zhang is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Decagon, the conversational AI platform for customer experience. As one of the fastest growing companies in the valley, they have raised over $230M at a last round price of $1.5BN.…

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