For most enterprise companies, artificial intelligence remains either an unfulfilled promise or a significant security risk. A new effort by Lithuania’s most prominent entrepreneur duo to solve this problem has attracted both attention and substantial funding.
Just months after emerging from stealth with an eight million dollar funding round, Nord Security co-founders Tomas Okmanas and Eimantas Sabaliauskas have secured a thirty million euro Series A investment for their new startup, Nexos. The platform addresses corporate AI adoption by acting as a secure intermediary between employees and AI systems.
Okmanas believes the biggest corporate data leak is currently underway as employees upload sensitive information to public large language models. Instead of banning AI use, he envisions Nexos as a neutral intermediary, a Switzerland for LLMs. By positioning itself between teams and AI tools, the platform aims to keep corporate data secure without sacrificing the productivity gains that companies seek but fear pursuing.
This combination of experienced founders tackling a critical enterprise issue explains why the new funding round was secured so quickly. The round was co-led by Index and Evantic Capital, valuing the company at three hundred million euros. Previous investors Creandum and Dig Ventures also participated, alongside angel backers including the CEOs of Datadog, Klarna, Supercell, and Wix.
Okmanas stated that Evantic, the new venture firm from former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Miller, was persistent enough to make the investment happen even though Nexos was not actively fundraising. He and Sabaliauskas famously bootstrapped their previous ventures, including the cybersecurity company Nord, but now see the value that venture capitalists can add.
Beyond financial support from Index, Nexos is now benefiting from Miller’s guidance and his Legends network. This network consists of 140 operators who advise the firm’s portfolio startups in exchange for a share of the fund’s profits. Okmanas is both a Legend himself and is drawing on the expertise of others to shape the product, which is where the new capital will be directed.
The current Nexos product includes an AI Workspace interface for employees and an AI Gateway for developers. This gateway serves as a control layer for security, cost management, and compliance, while also reducing the fragmentation that Okmanas identifies as a key barrier to AI adoption. The gateway provides a single access point to approximately 200 AI models, and the company plans to use its new funding to accelerate support for private models designed for sensitive data.
Okmanas reported that his team is currently conducting 50 to 60 demo calls per week. He anticipates that traditional businesses will have significant homework to convince their boards about AI adoption strategies. Nexos could help by making deployment easier. The startup is initially focusing on tech-savvy companies that already use AI daily, as well as firms in regulated industries that have concerns about governance and sending sensitive data to models hosted in other countries.
Okmanas and Sabaliauskas identified this AI governance gap while overseeing the portfolio of Tesonet, their company that builds and invests in startups. Tesonet portfolio companies are among the customers that Nexos is disclosing, alongside Bulgarian fintech unicorn Payhawk. According to a press release, the funding will support expansion across Europe and North America.
For Okmanas, the mission is to remove barriers to broader AI adoption. While corporate boards debate whether AI can deliver real value, he points to results within Tesonet’s own portfolio. At the web hosting provider Hostinger, an AI assistant reduced the need for human support. Okmanas stated that this initiative saved ten million euros this year alone and prevented the need to hire 500 people.
Despite sharing specific results from Hostinger, Okmanas declined to disclose how much revenue Nexos itself is generating. He did say that by the time the company celebrates its first anniversary, the team will have grown to 100 people, mostly in Europe. Data sovereignty concerns in Europe have also started to open doors for Nexos at public institutions, potentially creating a new market beyond its enterprise focus.