Nicholas M. W. Frosst (born January 5, 1993) is a Canadian computer scientist and musician who holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto. Working in computer science and machine learning, he was previously associated with Google Brain and Geoffrey Hinton, and co-founded Cohere, a Toronto-based artificial intelligence company. In his musical career, he has been the lead vocalist for the indie rock band Good Kid since 2015.^[1,2]

Frosst was born on January 5, 1993.^[3] He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and cognitive science from the University of Toronto in 2015.^[5] He was a student of Geoffrey Hinton, who also hired Frosst at Google Brain.^[6]

Frosst was among Geoffrey Hinton's earliest hires at Google Brain in Toronto, working as a machine learning researcher on deep learning and neural network architectures from 2016 to 2020.^[7] In 2019, Frosst co-founded Cohere with Aidan Gomez and Ivan Zhang to build large language models and enterprise AI tools.^[9] Frosst has publicly explained Cohere's focus on industries like finance and health, where privacy and other regulatory considerations exist.^[10] He has also spoken openly about his belief that artificial intelligence will not replace humans, but rather streamline and automate mundane tasks, as well as his belief that AGI is less "imminent" than many in the field claim.^[11,12] Frosst and the other Cohere co-founders were listed first on Maclean's AI Trailblazers Power List and The Logic's Innovation Leaders.^[14,13]

After spending time in a prior band which played "weird" music featuring a glockenspiel, Frosst and fellow computer science students at the University of Toronto formed the indie rock band Good Kid in 2015.^[15] Frosst is the lead vocalist for the band, and his vocals have been compared to that of Kele Okereke.^[1] While on tour with the band, Frosst continues his work in the tech industry remotely, describing the band as a way for him to relax and not constantly think about tech.^[1,16] In 2024, the band was nominated for the Juno Awards Breakthrough Group of the Year.^[17] As of 2026, the band, which has performed at Lollapalooza, has 3.1 million monthly Spotify listeners.^[1]