NanoCo, the innovative company behind NanoClaw, a secure alternative to OpenClaw, has successfully closed an oversubscribed seed funding round, raising $12 million. This significant investment follows a remarkably viral launch, as confirmed by its founders to TechCrunch.
The funding round was spearheaded by Valley Capital Partners and saw robust participation from prominent entities including Docker, Vercel, Monday.com, and Slow Ventures. Angel investors, notably Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, also contributed to the round.
Gavriel Cohen, NanoClaw's creator, shared his extraordinary journey with TechCrunch, detailing how within mere weeks he transitioned from coding the project on his couch to receiving widespread endorsements from figures like AI researcher Andrej Karpathy and Singapore's foreign minister. This surge in visibility led to inbound interest from dozens of investors and even a substantial acquisition offer of approximately $20 million, which he and his brother, co-founder Lazer Cohen, ultimately declined.
“It was under six weeks from committing the first lines of code to a term sheet,” Gavriel recounted, highlighting the rapid pace of their progress.
He further elaborated on the overwhelming interest, stating, “There was a lot of inbound and interest. People reaching out in DMs on X and sending emails.” Cohen estimated that over 50 founders and tech executives contacted them via direct messages, expressing a desire to invest.
Among these interested parties was Clem Delangue, who sent a concise message: “I like what you’re doing with NanoClaw.” Gavriel reciprocated, informing the Hugging Face CEO of his admiration for the company’s tiny robot, Reachy Mini, and his aspiration to run NanoClaw on it someday.
The conversation between the two programmers quickly evolved into a detailed discussion about their work, culminating in Cohen directly asking Delangue about his interest in angel investing, to which Delangue readily agreed.
Intriguingly, Gavriel notes that an active member of NanoClaw’s open-source community is already engaged in efforts to implement the software on Reachy Mini, demonstrating the project's broad appeal and collaborative spirit.
As previously reported, NanoClaw's popularity first soared following AI researcher Andrej Karpathy’s public praise on X. However, the project truly gained massive momentum after Singapore’s Foreign Minister lauded NanoClaw as his “second brain” in a widely shared Facebook post.
NanoClaw was initially developed by the Cohen brothers as a secure alternative to OpenClaw, intended to support their previous venture—an AI marketing firm that heavily utilized AI agents. Unlike traditional setups that grant agents direct access to a computer’s services and credentials, NanoClaw operates securely within a sandboxed container, an increasingly adopted practice for more secure, OpenClaw-like implementations.
Just a few months prior, this concept was considered novel, quickly gaining significant independent traction. Recognizing this burgeoning interest, the Cohen brothers began consulting with investors and fellow founders, seeking guidance on whether and how to transform their free project into a viable company.
During these discussions, a venture capitalist presented an offer to acquire the project immediately for one of his portfolio companies, proposing a “six-digit” dollar amount, as Cohen revealed.
While considering this offer, they encountered a founder friend who provided crucial insight: the value of open-source projects grows exponentially with the expansion of their community. This growth not only fosters rapid code contributions and project maturation but also leads to the discovery and demonstration of diverse new applications.
The friend advised the Cohen brothers that if they truly believed NanoClaw possessed such potential, they would need to abandon their existing venture and commit fully to the project.
“He was right,” Gavriel affirmed. Soon after, they closed their other business to concentrate solely on NanoClaw. This commitment was quickly followed by the viral social media posts and the establishment of key partnerships with Docker and Vercel.
Approximately two weeks after the initial acquisition offer, they received another, this one valued at around $20 million, which included employment opportunities to remain and manage their company. The brothers, however, chose to decline this offer as well.
“Since then, it’s only escalated. We have many thousands of people using NanoClaw,” Gavriel stated, underscoring the product’s sustained growth.
NanoCo has now begun onboarding enterprise customers, an initiative inspired by its community. Early adopters of NanoClaw were predominantly technically skilled individuals, many of whom are executives at major tech firms. After successfully setting up their own NanoClaw instances, these users frequently found themselves assisting coworkers who sought to replicate their setups.
Cohen clarified that while these individuals prefer not to become their companies’ dedicated NanoClaw IT support, NanoCo is prepared to fill that role. Consequently, the company now offers implementation services, leveraging "forward-deployed engineers" to assist businesses in deploying NanoClaw AI agents to their employees and providing continuous support.
While NanoCo chose not to disclose the identities of its initial enterprise customers, the brothers confirmed that executives at leading companies such as Amazon, Gap, Google, Meta, SentinelOne, and Accenture are actively utilizing NanoClaw.
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