NanoClaw Creator Rejects $20M Buyout, Secures $12M Seed Funding

NanoCo, the team behind NanoClaw—a security-first alternative to OpenClaw—has secured an oversubscribed $12 million seed round following a viral launch, founders Gavriel and Lazer Cohen told TechCrunch.

Valley Capital Partners led the funding round, with participation from Docker, Vercel, Monday.com, Slow Ventures, and angel investors including Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face.

Within weeks, NanoClaw creator Gavriel Cohen (pictured above, left) went from writing the initial code on his couch to receiving viral endorsements from AI researcher Andrej Karpathy and Singapore’s Foreign Minister. The project attracted interest from dozens of investors, including a roughly $20 million acquisition offer that Gavriel and his brother, co-founder Lazer Cohen (pictured above, right), ultimately declined.

“It took less than six weeks from writing the first line of code to signing a term sheet,” Gavriel told TechCrunch.

“The inbound interest was overwhelming,” he added. “People were reaching out via direct messages on X and sending emails.” He estimated that around 50 founders and tech executives reached out to invest.

Among them was Delangue, who sent a note saying, “I like what you’re doing with NanoClaw.” Gavriel replied, praising Hugging Face’s tiny robot, Reachy Mini, and expressing his hope to run NanoClaw on it one day.

The two developers then discussed technical details, and Cohen eventually asked Delangue if he was interested in angel investing, securing a positive response.

According to Gavriel, an active member of NanoClaw’s open-source community is already working on integrating the project with Reachy Mini.

As previously reported, interest in NanoClaw surged after AI researcher Andrej Karpathy tweeted his praise. However, the project truly gained momentum after Singapore’s Foreign Minister called NanoClaw his “second brain” in a viral Facebook post.

NanoClaw was developed as a secure alternative to OpenClaw to support the Cohen brothers’ previous startup, an AI marketing firm that utilized agents for various tasks.

Instead of running directly on a computer with access to all services and credentials, NanoClaw operates within a sandboxed container—a growing best practice for securing OpenClaw-like environments.

However, just a few months ago, the concept was novel and began to take on a life of its own. Recognizing the growing interest, the Cohen brothers started consulting with investors and other founders, asking whether they should transition this free project into a formal company and how to do so.

One venture capitalist offered to acquire the project for a “six-figure” sum for one of his portfolio companies, Cohen recalled.

While considering this offer, they met a founder friend who provided a key insight: open-source projects gain exponential value as their community expands. These users not only contribute code to accelerate development but also discover and demonstrate diverse use cases.

He advised the Cohen brothers that if they believed NanoClaw could achieve this level of community-driven growth, they needed to leave their other venture and commit fully to it.

“He was right,” Gavriel said. Shortly after closing their other business and focusing on NanoClaw, viral posts emerged, and their new company secured partnerships with Docker and Vercel.

About two weeks after that initial offer, they received another, this time for approximately $20 million, including employment contracts to stay and run their company. The brothers declined this offer as well.

“Since then, momentum has only increased. We now have thousands of users actively using NanoClaw,” he said.

NanoCo has begun onboarding enterprise customers, a strategy inspired by its community. Early adopters have been technically skilled individuals, many of whom are executives at major tech firms. After setting up their own NanoClaw instances, these users were frequently approached by colleagues seeking assistance to do the same.

These professionals do not want to become internal NanoClaw IT staff, Cohen explained, but NanoCo does. The company now offers implementation services—often referred to as “forward-deployed engineers”—to help businesses deploy NanoClaw AI agents for employees and provide ongoing support.

While NanoCo has not disclosed the identities of its early enterprise clients, the brothers confirmed that executives at companies such as Amazon, Gap, Google, Meta, SentinelOne, and Accenture are actively using NanoClaw.