NanoClaw creator rejects $20M buyout, raises $12M seed instead

NanoCo, the startup behind the security-focused OpenClaw alternative NanoClaw, has raised an oversubscribed $12 million seed round led by Valley Capital Partners after a viral launch. Co-founder Gavriel Cohen, who coded the initial project on his couch, revealed that the frenzy included a roughly $20 million acquisition offer—complete with jobs to stay—which he and his brother Lazer turned down. The project took off after endorsements from AI researcher Andrej Karpathy and Singapore's foreign minister, who called NanoClaw his "second brain." Within six weeks of the first commit, Cohen was fielding inbound DMs from over 50 founders and executives, including Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue.

The technology differentiates itself by running AI agents in sandboxed containers rather than directly on a user's machine, a practice that enhances security for enterprise deployments. The open-source community quickly grew, with contributors from big tech companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Accenture using NanoClaw internally. Seeing demand for managed support, NanoCo now offers implementation services via "forward-deployed engineers" to help enterprises roll out the tool. The seed round also included investors like Docker, Vercel, and Monday.com, signaling strong ecosystem interest in secure agent infrastructure.