source: techcrunch ai: nanoclaw creator turns down $20m buyout offer, raises $12m seed instead
level: business
nanoco, the startup behind the security-focused openclaw alternative nanoclaw, raised an oversubscribed $12 million seed round led by valley capital partners. docker, vercel, monday.com, slow ventures, and hugging face ceo clem delangue also participated. the funding came after a viral launch that saw nanoclaw endorsed by ai researcher andrej karpathy and singapore's foreign minister, who called it his "second brain" in a facebook post.
co-founder gavriel cohen said the project went from first code to term sheet in under six weeks. the brothers received a roughly $20 million acquisition offer but declined it, betting on nanoclaw's open-source community growth. they had previously shut down their ai marketing startup to focus on nanoclaw after a founder friend advised that open-source projects gain value as their communities expand. the project now has thousands of users and partnerships with docker and vercel.
nanoco is now signing enterprise customers, offering implementation services to help companies roll out nanoclaw ai agents. early adopters include technical executives at firms like amazon, gap, google, meta, sentinelone, and accenture. nanoclaw runs sandboxed in a container, a security practice that was novel when the project launched. the company plans to provide ongoing support, letting businesses avoid the burden of managing their own instances.
why it matters: nanoclaw's rapid adoption and enterprise traction show how open-source ai agent tools can quickly become critical infrastructure, with security and community driving value.
source: techcrunch ai: nanoclaw creator turns down $20m buyout offer, raises $12m seed instead