NanoCo raises $12 million seed round after NanoClaw goes viral

In short: NanoCo raised a $12 million seed round for NanoClaw after the founders turned down a roughly $20 million buyout offer.

What happened

NanoCo, the company behind NanoClaw, says it raised an oversubscribed (more demand than available) $12 million seed round. A seed round is early funding that helps a new company hire people and build its product.

The round was led by Valley Capital Partners. Other backers included Docker, Vercel, Monday.com, Slow Ventures, and several individual investors, including Clem Delangue, the CEO of Hugging Face.

Founders Gavriel Cohen and Lazer Cohen told TechCrunch they turned down an acquisition offer of around $20 million. Gavriel Cohen said the project moved quickly, going from the first lines of code to an investor term sheet in under six weeks.

NanoClaw is positioned as a safer alternative to OpenClaw, a tool used to run “AI agents,” which are programs that can carry out tasks for you. NanoClaw tries to reduce risk by running inside a “container,” which is like putting the software in a locked room so it cannot freely reach everything on a computer.

Interest in NanoClaw rose after endorsements on social media, including posts from AI researcher Andrej Karpathy and Singapore’s foreign minister. The founders also said NanoCo is beginning to sign business customers and offer hands-on setup and support for companies.

Why it matters

As more workplaces experiment with AI tools that can take actions, companies are paying closer attention to safety. Tools like NanoClaw are one sign that buyers want convenience, but also guardrails, especially when software might touch sensitive accounts and data.

Source: TechCrunch AI