Copenhagen-based NobodyWho has raised €2 million in pre-seed funding from PSV Tech, The Footprint Firm, and Norrsken Evolve to advance its open-source approach to Small Language Models that run directly on users’ devices. The startup is positioning SLMs as a privacy-first, energy-efficient alternative to cloud-based large language models by enabling AI inference to happen locally on laptops and mobile phones, eliminating the need to send data to external servers. The fresh capital will be used to further develop the company’s on-device AI engine, grow its developer ecosystem and strengthen Europe’s AI sovereignty by offering a lower-cost, climate-aligned alternative to Big Tech’s cloud-centric AI infrastructure.
Founded by entrepreneur and artist Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm together with CTO Asbjørn Olling, NobodyWho is building technology that enables AI models to run locally on laptops and mobile phones, without requiring constant internet access or transferring data to third-party servers. By shifting inference and computation to the edge, the company argues it can significantly reduce both operational costs and the environmental footprint associated with large cloud-based models.
“While the rest of the world is racing to build ever-growing LLMs based on a bigger-is-better approach, we believe the next leap forward in AI will come from making models smaller, local, and human-centric. The future of AI won’t be won by size, but by decentralised models that anyone can run on their own devices.”, says founder & CEO, Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm. “The future of AI won’t be won by size.”
According to the company, early benchmarks indicate that its approach can deliver up to 100 times lower emissions during training and up to 500 times lower emissions during inference compared to traditional cloud-based LLMs. The architecture is designed to support offline use, privacy by design, and full data control—features that are increasingly relevant as European regulation tightens around data protection and AI governance.
NobodyWho’s open-source engine is already used by more than 5,000 developers and allows teams with limited AI experience to fine-tune and deploy SLMs with minimal setup. Because inference happens entirely on-device, applications can scale without server-side compute costs, an approach the company sees as particularly attractive for startups and privacy-sensitive organisations.
Investors backing the round point to local, energy-efficient AI as a strategic opportunity for Europe. Christel Piron, co-founder and general partner at PSV Tech, described NobodyWho as “critical European AI infrastructure,” while The Footprint Firm highlighted the company’s potential to reduce emissions in one of the fastest-growing sources of energy consumption in tech.
“I’ve known Cecilie for nearly a decade and have seen first-hand how she consistently turns bold ideas into real, working technology,” says Christel Piron, Co-founder and General Partner at PSV Tech. “Backing NobodyWho was a no-brainer for us: this is an exceptional team building critical European AI infrastructure that is privacy-protecting, energy-efficient, and accessible to developers and companies everywhere – exactly the kind of technology PSV Tech exists to support and we want to see scale from the Nordics”.
With the new funding, NobodyWho plans to deepen its technical capabilities, strengthen cross-platform support, and position on-device AI as a viable, scalable alternative to today’s cloud-heavy AI landscape—challenging the assumption that bigger models are always better.
Sofie Käll, CIO at The Footprint Firm, continues: “By enabling high-performance SLMs to run directly on users’ devices, they significantly reduce the carbon footprint of AI inference while enhancing data privacy, lowering operational costs, and strengthening European AI sovereignty. NobodyWho is pioneering the infrastructure that makes these ultra-efficient models truly plug-and-play for developers. This is a transformative climate-tech opportunity in one of the fastest-growing emissions categories, and we’re excited to support a team capable of moving the industry toward more responsible AI.”
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Read the orginal article: https://arcticstartup.com/nobodywho-raises-e2-million-pre-seed/
