Nexos.ai scores €30 million to help companies adopt AI safely
Nexos.ai, a startup from Nord Security co-founders Tomas Okmanas and Eimantas Sabaliauskas, has raised a €30 million Series A. The round, co-led by Index Ventures and Evantic Capital, is aimed at helping enterprises securely adopt AI tools.
The funding round, equivalent to approximately $35 million, was finalized in early 2024 and places the company’s valuation at €300 million, or about $350 million. This development follows just months after Nexos.ai emerged from stealth with an $8 million funding round that was also led by Index Ventures. In addition to the co-leads for the Series A, previous backers Creandum and Dig Ventures participated. The round was also supported by a group of angel investors, including the chief executive officers of Datadog, Klarna, Supercell, and Wix.
The company’s mission addresses what co-founder Tomas Okmanas describes as a looming risk of “the biggest corporate data leak” resulting from employees uploading sensitive information into large language models. Rather than banning these tools, Nexos.ai aims to act as a “Switzerland for LLMs.” The platform is designed to function as a neutral intermediary positioned between a company’s employees and its AI systems. This architecture is intended to keep corporate data under control while still allowing organizations to achieve the productivity gains associated with artificial intelligence.
The funding was secured through the persistence of co-leader Evantic Capital, a new venture firm launched by former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Miller. According to Okmanas, Evantic pursued the deal even when Nexos.ai was not actively fundraising. This embrace of venture capital marks a tactical shift for the founders, who famously bootstrapped their prior businesses, including the $3 billion cybersecurity company Nord. Nexos.ai now gains access to guidance from Miller’s “Legends” network, a group of 140 operators who advise portfolio companies. Okmanas is a member of this network and also draws upon its expertise.
The new capital will be used to further develop the company’s product, which currently consists of two main components. The first is an AI Workspace, an interface for employees, and the second is an AI Gateway for developers. This gateway acts as a central control layer for security, cost management, and compliance oversight. It also addresses what Okmanas sees as a key barrier to AI adoption—fragmentation—by providing a single access point to a catalog of some 200 different AI models. A primary use of the new funding will be to accelerate support for private AI models that can handle sensitive data.
The company reports conducting 50 to 60 demo calls per week. Okmanas believes traditional businesses will have “a lot of homework” to do to convince their boards on how to adopt AI. For this reason, Nexos.ai is initially focusing its efforts on tech-savvy companies that already use AI daily and on organizations operating in regulated industries. These sectors have heightened concerns about governance and the security implications of sending sensitive data to AI models hosted in foreign countries.
The idea for the company originated from the founders’ work with Tesonet, their firm that builds and invests in startups. While overseeing the Tesonet portfolio, Okmanas and Sabaliauskas identified the critical AI governance gap in the market. Tesonet portfolio companies are among the first customers of Nexos.ai. The Bulgarian fintech unicorn Payhawk, which also operates an office in Vilnius, is another disclosed client. According to a press release, the new funding will support expansion across Europe and North America.
To illustrate the value proposition for enterprises, Okmanas points to a case within the Tesonet portfolio. At web hosting provider Hostinger, an AI assistant reduced the need for human support. He stated, “That’s why we didn’t need to hire 500 people and saved €10 million this year alone.” While declining to disclose Nexos.ai’s own revenue, Okmanas said that by its first anniversary, the team will grow to 100 people, mostly in Europe. This European focus aligns with emerging opportunities at public institutions concerned with data sovereignty, potentially opening a new market beyond its enterprise focus.
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