Cohere launches North, an AI agent platform focused on enterprise data security
Canadian AI startup Cohere rolled out North, a new AI agent platform built to keep enterprise data locked tight behind private firewalls.
Concerned about data leaks and training foundation models on sensitive info, big companies and governments have held back on AI tools. North aims to fix that by running entirely on customer infrastructure — on-premises, hybrid cloud, or even air-gapped setups. 
CEO Nick Frosst said during a demo:
“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 access that useful data, and that means they need to be deployed in [the customer’s] environment.”
No need for Azure or AWS clouds. North can run on as few as two GPUs, even in a “GPU in a closet” setting, Frosst added.
The platform also packs in granular access controls, autonomy rules for agents, continuous security testing, and meets GDPR, SOC-2, and ISO 27001 standards.
Cohere has already piloted North with heavyweight clients like RBC, Dell, LG, Ensemble Health Partners, and Palantir.
North covers standard AI tasks — chat, search, answering customer support, summarizing meetings, marketing copywriting, and internal plus web data access. Every AI response includes citations and “chains of thought” for easy audit and verification.
Under the hood, North builds on Cohere’s existing tools: the Command generative AI models and Compass multimodal search stack. North runs a Command variant optimized for enterprise reasoning.
Frosst highlighted North’s work capabilities:
“It goes beyond just Q&A and gets into doing work for you. So, [North] has a bunch of asset creation. It can make tables, it can make documents, it can make slideshows. It can do a bunch of market research.”
Cohere acquired market research automation startup Ottogrid in May, strengthening these functions.
North integrates with popular workplace apps like Gmail, Slack, Salesforce, Outlook, and Linear. It also supports Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers for industry-specific or custom apps.
The company’s pitch: start with chat for knowledge access, then smoothly shift to automation as confidence grows.
Cohere has raised $970M in funding, valued most recently at $5.5 billion.
No word yet on wider rollout availability. Watch this space.
