A brand new AI orchestration startup from the founders of Lithuanian unicorn Nord Safety is getting down to assist enterprises put their AI tasks into manufacturing, with an preliminary concentrate on bringing better visibility, safety and adaptableness to giant language fashions (LLMs).
Nexos.ai, because the startup known as, is the handiwork of Tomas Okmanas (pictured above) and Eimantas Sabaliauskas, who constructed one of the vital recognizable manufacturers not solely in Lithuania, however in all of Europe. Nord Safety, finest identified for its flagship VPN product NordVPN, bootstrapped its method by way of its first 10 years earlier than succumbing to a bumper $100 million funding in 2022 at a $1.6 billion valuation (it later hit a $3 billion valuation throughout a subsequent fundraise).
Their new firm is exiting stealth at the moment with $8 million in funding from a slew of high-profile backers, together with lead investor Index Ventures, which has now made its first ever funding into Lithuania.
“We’ve identified of Tomas and the work that he’s executed for a few years, in order quickly as we heard that he was constructing a brand new firm within the AI house, and was lastly keen to take enterprise capital cash at this [early] stage, we had been very keen,” Index Ventures’ associate Hannah Seal instructed TechCrunch.
Different notable buyers embody Creandum and Dig Ventures, and outstanding angels such because the CEOs of Datadog, Klarna, Supercell, and Wix additionally participated.
Capitalizing on a catalyst
Presently, groups that wish to put their AI into manufacturing have to attach myriad instruments, which possible includes recruiting and constructing groups with the required abilities. That is the place Nexos.ai desires to step in.
“I’ve seen that there’s a giant hole between operating AI as pilots and going into manufacturing,” Okmanas instructed TechCrunch in an interview. “Once you’re testing AI in your lab, it’d work and it may be helpful, however whenever you wish to put it into manufacturing, particularly in enterprises, how do you guarantee excessive availability? How do you guarantee safety? How do you handle value?”
Nord Safety’s been round for greater than a decade, however 5 years in the past, it was folded into an umbrella firm referred to as Tesonet, an incubator with a portfolio of greater than two-dozen companies. One in every of these is web-hosting agency Hostinger, which not too long ago added AI-enabled smarts to its web site constructing software. Okmanas, a Hostinger board member and shareholder, stated among the points they encountered served as a catalyst for what would ultimately grow to be Nexos.ai.
“We needed to make use of AI in our web site builder, so we turned on OpenAI, we began testing it, and we put it in manufacturing,” Okmanas stated. “In August, we had $150,000 billed. For what? Why was it so costly? There was no visibility.”
And when OpenAI went down a handful of occasions, Okmanas was satisfied that one thing needed to be executed to make it simpler to deploy, handle and optimize the “more and more advanced ecosystem of AI fashions” that organizations might have.
Via a easy API (software programming interface), prospects can entry greater than 200 AI fashions, from big-name incumbents like OpenAI and Anthropic to smaller, area of interest LLMs. The thought is, if OpenAI goes down, an organization can briefly (and routinely) change to a distinct supplier with out breaking stride. Or if the prices concerned in accessing a selected LLM explode for no matter cause, an organization can transition to a different one to maintain their prices down.
Nexos.ai additionally ushers “clever caching” into the combination — if a selected query is repeated by a number of customers, the system can flip to its personal database relatively than persevering with to have interaction the LLM, which might get costly.
On the safety and compliance fronts, Nexos.ai additionally prevents people from sending non-public information to LLM suppliers, or if an worker leaves an organization, their entry will be terminated instantly.
There’s no escaping the elephant within the room, although: One of many causes enterprises have been hesitant to embrace AI is the thorny concern of knowledge safety — healthcare firms, banks, or insurance coverage corporations can’t merely belief LLM suppliers with all their delicate info. It’s price noting that Hostinger itself was hit with an information breach in 2019 and NordVPN has additionally been hacked previously — the form of assaults that each one firms face at the moment.
This raises questions round how Nexos.ai handles such information, provided that it’s internet hosting every little thing by itself infrastructure. Okmanas stated the corporate will possible provide self-hosting sooner or later, and that it already helps integrations with firms’ personal inside LLMs.
It additionally has guardrails in place to detect when information, similar to personally identifiable info (PII), is shipped to it — in such instances, it may re-route the information again to the originating firm’s personal LLMs or database. But when a question is generic, like a buyer asking an AI agent for particulars about their location and opening hours, then the question might be dealt with on the Nexos.ai aspect.
From concept to inception
Going from an concept to formal incorporation took Nexos.ai round six weeks, and whereas the pace of securing the funding was largely all the way down to the founders’ pedigree, a giant a part of it was merely the timing.
“I really feel like we’ve lastly gone past the hype of AI, and now the real-world functions are coming,” Seal added. “All the big enterprises are realizing that is actually significant, and they should undertake AI at scale. And now could be the time for the infrastructure to meet up with the fashions.”
The pace of execution, although, was substantively because of the broader organizational setup at Tesonet, which has round 4,000 staff throughout its portfolio. This enabled Okmanas to rapidly assemble a staff of round 30 individuals who he knew and trusted to work on Nexos.ai full-time.
“Now we have these groups that may actually be a part of forces — they’ve been working collectively for thus a few years, there’s no want to inform them what’s what,” Okmanas stated. “We’ll even be hiring from the skin, however that takes way more time.”
Nexos.ai’s platform is ready to launch by the tip of March, although Okmanas stated it’s already working with a bunch of “beta prospects and design companions.”
