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A novel AI orchestration inauguration from the founder of Lithuanian unicornNord Securityis setting out to help initiative put their AI undertaking into yield , with an initial focus on bringing swell profile , certificate , and adaptability to large language models ( LLMs ) .
Nexos.ai , as the inauguration is call , is the handiwork ofTomas Okmanas(pictured above ) andEimantas Sabaliauskas , who built one of the most placeable brands not only in Lithuania , but also in all of Europe . Nord Security , best know for its flagship VPN product NordVPN , bootstrapped its way through its first 10 years beforesuccumbing to a bumper $ 100 million investmentin 2022 at a $ 1.6 billion valuation ( it later hit a$3 billion valuationduring a subsequent fundraise ) .
Their newfangled fellowship is exiting stealth today with $ 8 million in funding from a slew of eminent - profile backers , admit lead-in investorIndex Ventures , which has now made its first ever investment into Lithuania .
“ We ’ve make out of Tomas and the work that he ’s done for many years , so as shortly as we find out that he was building a new company in the AI outer space , and was finally willing to take venture capital money at this [ other ] stage , we were very eager , ” Index Ventures ’ partnerHannah Sealtold TechCrunch .
Other notable investors include Creandum and Dig Ventures , and spectacular angels such as the CEOs of Datadog , Klarna , Supercell , and Wix also participated .
Capitalizing on a catalyst
Currently , teams that want to put their AI into production have to connect numberless prick , which in all likelihood involves recruiting and edifice squad with the necessary skill . This is where Nexos.ai wants to step in .
“ I ’ve see that there ’s a openhanded gap between running AI as pilot burner and going into yield , ” Okmanas told TechCrunch in an consultation . “ When you ’re examine AI in your research lab , it might work and it can be utilitarian , but when you want to put it into yield , peculiarly in enterprises , how do you ensure high availability ? How do you ensure security ? How do you manage toll ? ”
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Nord Security ’s been around for more than a tenner , but five year ago , it was close down into an umbrella company called Tesonet , an brooder with aportfolioof more than two 12 business sector . One of these is web - hosting business firm Hostinger , which recently addedAI - enable smarts to its internet site - construction peter . Okmanas , a Hostinger board penis and shareholder , pronounce some of the issue they encountered serve up as a accelerator for what would finally become Nexos.ai .
“ We wanted to apply AI in our website constructor , so we wrick on OpenAI , we start testing it , and we put it in production , ” Okmanas say . “ In August , we had $ 150,000 bill . For what ? Why was it so expensive ? There was no visibility . ”
And when OpenAI went down a handful of metre , Okmanas was convert that something had to be done to make it soft to deploy , deal , and optimize the “ increasingly complex ecosystem of AI models ” that arrangement may need .
Through a bare API ( lotion programming interface ) , customers can get at more than 200 AI models , from braggart - name incumbents like OpenAI and Anthropic to smaller , niche LLMs . The idea is , if OpenAI goes down , a company can temporarily ( and automatically ) switch to a different provider without let on stride . Or if the costs involved in accessing a specific LLM explode for whatever grounds , a company can transition to another one to keep their costs down .
Nexos.ai also show “ intelligent caching ” into the mix — if a finical question is repeated by multiple users , the system can turn to its own database rather than cover to hire the LLM , which can get expensive .
On the protection and compliance fronts , Nexos.ai also prevent individuals from sending individual data point to LLM providers , or if an employee leaves a company , their access can be terminated immediately .
There ’s no escaping the elephant in the room , though : One of the reasonsenterprises have been hesitating to sweep up AIis the thorny issue of data security — healthcare companies , banks , and policy firms ca n’t just trust LLM providers with all their sensitive information . It ’s deserving observe that Hostinger itself washit with a data breach in 2019and NordVPNhas also been hackedin the past tense — the sort of attacks that all caller present today .
This raises questions around how Nexos.ai handles such data , yield that it is host everything on its own infrastructure . Okmanas said the company will probably pop the question self - hosting in the future and that it already supports integrations with companies ’ own internal LLMs .
It also has guardrails in place to detect when data , such as in person identifiable information ( PII ) , is sent to it — in such pillowcase , it can re - route the data back to the uprise caller ’s own LLMs or database . But if a interrogation is generic , like a client asking an AI broker for details about their localisation and opening hours , then the inquiry will be manage on the Nexos.ai side .
From idea to inception
snuff it from an theme to formal incorporation took Nexos.ai around six week , and while the speed of securing the funding was for the most part down to the founders ’ pedigree , a big part of it was simply the timing .
“ I feel like we ’ve finally gone beyond the hype of AI , and now the real - world lotion are coming , ” Seal added . “ All the heavy enterprises are realizing this is really meaningful , and they postulate to adopt AI at scale . And now is the sentence for the infrastructure to catch up with the models . ”
The f number of carrying out , though , was substantively due to the encompassing organizational apparatus at Tesonet , which has around 4,000 employees across its portfolio . This enabled Okmanas to quickly tack together a team of around 30 people who he knew and trusted to puzzle out on Nexos.ai full - time .
“ We have these team that can really join forces — they ’ve been working together for so many years , there ’s no need to tell them what ’s what , ” Okmanas said . “ We ’ll also be hiring from the exterior , but that takes much more metre . ”
Nexos.ai ’s chopine is countersink to launch by the remainder of March , though Okmanas said it is already work with a bunch of “ beta customers and blueprint partners . ”
