For most businesses, AI is either an unrealized promise or a security risk. The efforts of Lithuania’s most famous entrepreneurial duo to solve this challenge have garnered attention and money.
Just months after Nexos.ai came out of stealth with an $8 million funding round led by Index Ventures, Nord Security co-founders Tomas Okmanas and Eimantas Sabaliauskas have closed a €30 million (approximately $35 million) Series A for the new startup. It is a platform that helps businesses securely deploy AI tools by acting as an intermediary between employees and AI systems.
In Okmanas’ view, the “biggest corporate data breach” is currently underway, with employees uploading sensitive information to LLM. Rather than banning the use of AI, he wants Nexos.ai to act as “Switzerland for LLMs” and act as a neutral intermediary. By sitting between teams and AI tools, the platform aims to put data under control without sacrificing the productivity gains that businesses want but are afraid to pursue.
The combination of experienced founders tackling big problems for companies explains why this new round was raised so quickly — co-led by Index and Evantic Capital and valued at 300 million euros (about $350 million), a company spokesperson said. Previous backers Creandum and Dig Ventures were joined by angel backers including the CEOs of Datadog, Klarna, Supercell, and Wix.
Evantic, a new venture founded by former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Miller, was tenacious enough to pull off the round even though Nexos.ai had not raised any money, Okmanas said. He and Savariauskas are famous for starting previous businesses themselves, including Nord, the $3 billion cybersecurity company behind NordVPN. But they are now realizing the added value from VCs.
In addition to Index support, Nexos.ai now benefits from Mr. Miller’s guidance and his “Legends” network – 140 operators who advise startups in Evantic’s portfolio in exchange for a portion of the fund’s profits. Okmanas said he is a legend in his own right and leverages the expertise of others to shape the product, which is where the new funding will go.
Nexos’ AI products currently consist of an AI workspace interface for employees and an AI gateway for developers. The gateway serves as a control layer for security, cost management, and compliance monitoring while reducing fragmentation. Okmanas believes this is a major barrier to AI adoption. The gateway provides a single point of access to approximately 200 AI models, and the company plans to use the funding to accelerate support for private models of sensitive data.
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Okmanas said his team is currently conducting 50 to 60 demo calls a week, but he expects traditional companies will have to do “a lot of homework” to convince boards of directors how they want to adopt AI. Nexos.ai can help them by making deployment easier. But first, the startup is focusing on tech-savvy companies that already use AI on a daily basis, as well as companies operating in regulated industries that have concerns about governance or sending sensitive data to AI models hosted in foreign countries.
Okmanas and Savariauskas identified gaps in AI governance while overseeing the portfolio of Tesonet, a company that builds and invests in startups. Tesonet portfolio companies are also among Nexos.ai’s publicly listed customers, along with Bulgarian fintech unicorn Payhawk, which also has an office in Vilnius. The funding will support the company’s expansion across Europe and North America, according to a press release.
Okmanas’ mission is to remove barriers to widespread adoption of AI. As boards debate whether AI can deliver real value, he points to results within Tesonet’s own portfolio. At web hosting provider Hostinger, an AI assistant has reduced the need for human assistance. “We therefore no longer have to employ 500 people and have saved €10 million this year alone,” Okmanas said.
Despite talking about the numbers on Hostinger, Okmanas declined to say how much revenue Nexos.ai itself generates. Instead, he said the team will grow to 100 people by the time the company reaches its first anniversary. Nexos.ai is primarily based in Europe, and public institutions are starting to open up to Nexos.ai due to concerns about data sovereignty, and it has the potential to open up new markets beyond the enterprise sector.
This article’s heading has been corrected for accuracy.
