A brand new AI orchestration startup from the founders of Lithuanian unicorn Nord Safety is getting down to assist enterprises put their AI initiatives into manufacturing, with an preliminary deal with bringing higher visibility, safety and adaptableness to massive language fashions (LLMs).
Nexos.ai, because the startup is named, is the handiwork of Tomas Okmanas (pictured above) and Eimantas Sabaliauskas, who constructed probably the most recognizable manufacturers not solely in Lithuania, however in all of Europe. Nord Safety, finest recognized for its flagship VPN product NordVPN, bootstrapped its approach by its first 10 years earlier than succumbing to a bumper $100 million funding in 2022 at a $1.6 billion valuation.
Their new firm is exiting stealth in the present day 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 recognized of Tomas and the work that he’s performed 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 distinguished angels such because the CEOs of Datadog, Klarna, Supercell, and Wix additionally participated.
Capitalizing on a catalyst
At the moment, groups that need to put their AI into manufacturing have to attach myriad instruments, which doubtless entails recruiting and constructing groups with the required expertise. That is the place Nexos.ai needs to step in.
“I’ve seen that there’s an enormous hole between working 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 if you need 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 known as Tesonet, an incubator with a portfolio of greater than two-dozen companies. One in all these is web-hosting agency Hostinger, which just lately added AI-enabled smarts to its web site constructing instrument. Okmanas, a Hostinger board member and shareholder, mentioned a few of the points they encountered served as a catalyst for what would finally turn out to be Nexos.ai.
“We wished 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 mentioned. “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 performed to make it simpler to deploy, handle and optimize the “more and more advanced ecosystem of AI fashions” that organizations might have.
By way of 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 concept is, if OpenAI goes down, an organization can briefly (and robotically) change to a distinct supplier with out breaking stride. Or if the prices concerned in accessing a selected LLM explode for no matter purpose, 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 quite 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 knowledge to LLM suppliers, or if an worker leaves an organization, their entry may 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 situation of knowledge safety — healthcare firms, banks, or insurance coverage companies 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 every one firms face in the present day.
This raises questions round how Nexos.ai handles such knowledge, provided that it’s internet hosting every thing by itself infrastructure. Okmanas mentioned the corporate will doubtless provide self-hosting sooner or later, and that it already helps integrations with firms’ personal inner LLMs.
It additionally has guardrails in place to detect when knowledge, akin to personally identifiable info (PII), is distributed to it — in such circumstances, it will possibly 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 facet.
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, an enormous 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 massive enterprises are realizing that is actually significant, and they should undertake AI at scale. And now’s 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 workers throughout its portfolio. This enabled Okmanas to shortly assemble a staff of round 30 individuals who he knew and trusted to work on Nexos.ai full-time.
“We’ve 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 mentioned. “We’ll even be hiring from the surface, however that takes rather more time.”
Nexos.ai’s platform is about to launch by the top of March, although Okmanas mentioned it’s already working with a bunch of “beta prospects and design companions.”
