European AI rising star Nexos.ai raises $30 million to unleash AI adoption in enterprises

For most companies, AI is either an unfulfilled promise or a security risk. The efforts of Lithuania’s most famous entrepreneurial duo to solve this dilemma have received attention and funding.

Just months after Nexos.ai emerged from secrecy with an $8 million funding round led by Index Ventures, Nord Security founders Thomas Okmanas and Imantas Sabaliauskas have closed a Series A worth €30 million (about $35 million) for this new startup — a platform that helps companies securely adopt AI tools through business. As an intermediary between employees and artificial intelligence systems.

In Okmanas’ view, the “largest corporate data leak” is currently underway, with employees uploading sensitive information to the MBA. Instead of banning the use of AI, he wants Nexos.ai to act as a “Switzerland for LLMs,” acting as a neutral intermediary. By sitting between teams and AI tools, the platform aims to keep data under control without sacrificing the productivity gains that companies want but are afraid to pursue.

This mix of experienced founders tackling a critical enterprise problem explains why this new round was raised so quickly — with Index and Evantic Capital participating at a valuation of €300 million (about $350 million), according to a company spokesperson. Previous backers Creandum and Dig Ventures also participated, along with angel backers, including the CEOs of Datadog, Klarna, Supercell and Wix.

Okmanas said Evantec, the greenfield venture firm launched by former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Miller, was persistent enough to achieve the round even though Nexos.ai was not raising money. He and Sabaliauskas are best known for bootstrapping their previous businesses, including Nord, the $3 billion cybersecurity company behind NordVPN. But they are now seeing added value from venture capital firms.

In addition to backing the index, Nexos.ai now benefits from Miller’s guidance and his network of “Legends” — 140 operators who advise startups in Evantic’s portfolio in exchange for a share of the fund’s profits. Okmanas said he is a legend himself and relies on the experiences of others to shape the product – which is where the new capital is headed.

Currently, the Nexos AI product consists of an AI Workspace interface for employees and an AI portal for developers. The gateway acts as a control layer for security, cost management and compliance monitoring while reducing fragmentation, which Okmanas sees as a major barrier to AI adoption. The portal provides a single point of access to about 200 AI models, and the company plans to use its funding to accelerate its support for private models for sensitive data.

Okmanas said his team currently conducts 50 to 60 demo calls a week, but he expects traditional companies will have “a lot of homework” to do to convince their boards of how to adopt AI. Nexos.ai can help them by making the deployment process easier. But first, the startup is focusing on tech-savvy companies that already use AI daily, as well as companies in regulated industries, which have concerns about governance and sending sensitive data to AI models hosted in foreign countries.

Okmanas and Sabaliauskas identified the AI ​​governance gap while overseeing the portfolio of Tesonet, their company that builds and invests in startups. Tesonet’s portfolio companies are also among the clients Nexos.ai is unveiling, along with Bulgarian fintech unicorn Payhawk, which also has an office in Vilnius. According to a press release, the funding will now support expansion across Europe and North America.

For Ocamanas, the mission is to remove barriers to wider adoption of AI. As boards debate whether AI can deliver real value, he points to results within Tesonet’s own portfolio: At Hostinger, the web hosting provider, an AI assistant reduced the need for human support. “That’s why we didn’t need to hire 500 people and save €10 million this year alone,” Okmanas says.

Despite Hostinger’s reported numbers, Okmanas declined to reveal how much revenue Nexos.ai itself generates. Instead, he said, by the time the company celebrates its first anniversary, the team will have grown to 100 people — mostly in Europe, where data sovereignty concerns are also starting to open doors for Nexos.ai in public institutions, potentially opening up a new market beyond its institutional focus.