For most enterprise companies, artificial intelligence remains either an unfulfilled promise or a significant security risk. A new effort by Lithuania’s most famous entrepreneur duo to solve this problem has attracted considerable attention and funding.
Just months after Nexos.ai emerged from stealth with an eight million dollar funding round, Nord Security co-founders Tomas Okmanas and Eimantas Sabaliauskas have closed a thirty million euro Series A round for their new startup. This platform helps companies adopt AI tools securely by acting as a middleman between employees and AI systems.
Okmanas believes the biggest corporate data leak is currently underway as employees upload sensitive information to large language models. Instead of banning AI use, he envisions Nexos.ai as a neutral intermediary, a Switzerland for LLMs. By positioning the platform between teams and AI tools, the aim is to maintain data control without sacrificing the productivity gains that companies desire but fear pursuing.
This combination of seasoned founders tackling a critical enterprise problem explains why the new funding round was secured so quickly. The round was co-led by Index and Evantic Capital at a three hundred million euro valuation. Previous backers Creandum and Dig Ventures also participated, along with angel investors 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.ai was not actively fundraising. He and Sabaliauskas famously bootstrapped their previous businesses, including Nord, the three billion dollar cybersecurity company behind NordVPN, but they now recognize the value that venture capitalists can add.
Beyond the support from Index, Nexos.ai is now benefiting from Miller’s guidance and his Legends network, a group of 140 operators who advise the fund’s portfolio startups. Okmanas noted that he 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.
Currently, the Nexos product consists 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, while also reducing the fragmentation that Okmanas sees 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 funding to accelerate support for private models designed for sensitive data.
Okmanas said 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. Nexos.ai 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 AI models hosted abroad.
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.ai 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 Hostinger, a web hosting provider, an AI assistant reduced the need for human support. Okmanas stated that this is why they did not need to hire 500 people and saved ten million euros this year alone.
Despite discussing specific numbers for Hostinger, Okmanas declined to disclose how much revenue Nexos.ai 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.ai at public institutions, potentially creating a new market beyond its enterprise focus.