NestAI Grabs €100M, Boosts AI Defense Architecture With Nokia  ## Metadata - Author: [[Hard Fork AI]] - Full Title: NestAI Grabs €100M, Boosts AI Defense Architecture With Nokia - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/474597f5-c852-4011-82fe-6463ec20e9ce ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Europe Builds Sovereign Defense AI** - Nest AI raised €100M to build sovereign defense-grade AI models for Europe. - Jaeden Schafer says sovereign models reduce dependence on U.S. and Chinese tech and strengthen national security. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer And that is that Finland's Nest AI just raised 100 million euros and they raised it and signed a strategic partnership with Nokia to build AI systems specifically for defense and national Security. Now, in Europe, I That's think right now this is a really hot topic. It's definitely been out of vogue, I think, for many years in the past working with technology and defense. But I think right now we see that there definitely are foreign adversaries that are willing to invade countries, and you need to have the technology to fight against that. So I'm happy that this is kind of coming back to the forefront where this is no longer voodoo or taboo. I guess you could say, you know, Google in the past had a whole bunch of employees that pressured them to not work with any sort of defense departments in the United States. And, you know, at the end of the day, if you live inside of the United States, for, you know, something like Nokia or one of these other companies living inside of Finland, if you live inside Of a country, you would want to contribute to the national security because the country is directly benefiting your country, your company. Okay, off of my soapbox with that one, let's talk about what the company is doing. I think it's a really big signal that Europe is stepping directly into the arena with some really serious innovation. They have serious funding and they have serious intent. We're seeing more and more of these deals come out of the EU where they're heavily investing in AI. And I think it's going to have a lot of positive impacts. Before we get into that, I wanted to say you probably pay for multiple subscriptions to get access to all of the best AI tools. ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, 11 Labs for audio. There is a lot of cool tools for images and the cost can definitely add up very quickly. I had the same problem, so I built AIbox.ai. So for just $20 a month, you get over 40 different of the top AI models in one simple platform. You get text, image, audio, everything you need. It's all in one place. So no more juggling tabs, no more wasting money on overlapping subscriptions. If you want to give it a try, there's a link in the descriptions to AIbox.ai. Okay, let's get into Nest AI. Because this company just essentially came out of nowhere, and suddenly its position itself is one of the most important defense companies in or, you know, defense startups in Europe, Defense aligned, I guess you could say. So what does it do and why does Finland care so much about it? It's a Finnish company and it's building sovereign secure foundation models, which means that they're creating models that the European government and the militaries can run privately. So they're not depending on America or China and tech giants from those two countries. And Finland is very motivated right now. This is a country that shares a very long border with Russia. They joined NATO recently, and they have been accelerating their defense modernization much faster than a lot of people anticipated. So for Finland right now, creating this kind of secure AI is not a nice to have. It's definitely critical for their national survival. They're seeing what happened in the Ukraine. ([Time 0:00:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/779f4c4f-6f69-4313-9c34-ab0d0ad57c32)) - **Tech Worker Protests Versus National Duty** - Jaeden Schafer references past tech-industry reluctance to work with defense, like Google employee protests. - He contrasts that with national duty: companies should help their country's security when needed. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer I guess you could say, you know, Google in the past had a whole bunch of employees that pressured them to not work with any sort of defense departments in the United States. And, you know, at the end of the day, if you live inside of the United States, for, you know, something like Nokia or one of these other companies living inside of Finland, if you live inside Of a country, you would want to contribute to the national security because the country is directly benefiting your country, your company. ([Time 0:01:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c3f272d1-7479-4542-8464-f7f30b6aaf1a)) - **Offline, Encrypted Models For The Field** - Finland prioritizes secure, offline-capable AI because of its long border with Russia and NATO membership. - Jaeden Schafer highlights offline, end-to-end encrypted models as critical for remote bases and battlefield resilience. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer They're seeing what happened in the Ukraine. And what's interesting, they want a model that can operate offline. It's encrypted end to end. It has in remote bases, in battlefield environments, and without trickling any data back to silicon valley or any other countries i think honestly this is something i've talked about Before on the podcast the countries that secure their own sovereign ai models are going to have a really big advantage over countries that are outsourcing everything right you can't Outsource all of your data all of your ai all of your technology to other countries while the united states is very friendly with europe right now and i hope it's like that forever like You really just can't ever trust everyone else in the world. ([Time 0:03:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f3567f3b-1a78-42e1-9741-351ae14d039f)) - **Nokia Adds Secure Communications And Trust** - The Nokia partnership links Nest AI to secure communications and trusted European infrastructure. - Jaeden Schafer notes Nokia's government relationships and edge-hardware expertise make it a natural defense AI partner. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer And apparently investors agree because this is 100 million euros that is going into this company. And then they're also making a partnership with Nokia. And I think this is where it gets really interesting. Nest AI signed this strategic partnership with Nokia, which yes, this is the same one that built all of those brick phones that we used growing up. And I think this is important for a couple different reasons. Nokia controls a lot of secure communications infrastructure. Obviously, we're all using iPhones and Android phones today, some of which I guess Nokia could be having, you know, impact on them when Microsoft bought them and tried to do the Microsoft Deal, kind of killed Nokia from the handheld device, but they still control a lot of communications networks and a lot of infrastructure. And defense systems depend on these networks. Nokia already powers all of those. So merging now with AI is a really easy fit. They also have really deep relationships with the European governments. They're trusted. They're established. They're definitely a not controversial company. And so if they're saying, you know, we've created this AI and it's safe, I think NATO is more inclined to listen to them. They're a European company. And so that makes a lot more sense. ([Time 0:04:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3a454590-dd2c-44be-ba2c-08d4a52e9708)) - **AI As The New Defense Arms Race** - AI is rapidly becoming a military arms race driven by major powers' investments. - Jaeden Schafer argues the best AI will shape future geopolitics and battlefield outcomes. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer The real reason why this matters is because AI and defense is becoming an arms race right now every major power is funneling billions of dollars into AI military applications the US Has Palantir scale AI opening eye partnerships with the DoD they have Andrel they have shield AI China has its military tech ecosystem fully integrated with its AI giants Israel is Field testing fully autonomous targeting and vision systems the UAE is pouring billions into sovereign models like Falcon. And Europe is, you know, I hate to say it, but historically, it's been sort of slow and bureaucratic. So it's a bit overregulated. And they have a more of a focus on AI safety than on AI capabilities. So Finland is not waiting around this $100 million investment is essentially signaling to Europe that they are moving forward and the best AI is going to win the next geopolitical era. ([Time 0:06:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/30875478-b02a-4318-949c-3f7cbd4b3323)) - **Designing AI For Edge And Low Power** - Nest AI targets edge and low-power deployments: sensors, drones, and remote posts. - Jaeden Schafer stresses designing models that run without gigabit internet or large data centers. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer Nest AI is working on AI-enabled surveillance and reconnaissance tools, secure vision models for identifying threats in real time, AI decision support systems for military operations, Encrypted large language models for intelligence analysis, on-device AI that can run inside of military networks, autonomous detection systems for drones and sensors. I think one thing that really stood out to me is that they are building models that work offline in low power environments and without massive data centers. This is really big because right now most big AI models assume you have gigabit internet, huge GPU clusters, cloud systems. But if you're running a sensor tower at a remote border post or, you know, a drone in the Arctic, you don't have any of that. So Nest AI is designing an AI that works in the field and, you know, not just at some big data center in the desert somewhere. ([Time 0:06:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/55788a88-3325-42df-989b-132fdae7f4ce)) - **Prepare For Sovereign AI And Standards** - Expect nations to build private, secure LLMs and for NATO to create joint AI standards. - Jaeden Schafer recommends watching for more sovereign defense models and partnerships between defense firms and AI labs. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer Nations are investing billions. NATO is building joint AI frameworks. The U.Ss just approved autonomous drone deployments i think the battlefield is definitely becoming digital and investors know this so they're putting in a lot of money right now to Try to help uh fuel that so where does this go next i think a few things are coming number one europe is going to start announcing more sovereign ai defense models i think nato is going to Create a joint ai standard body uh defense companies are going to partner with AI labs directly. We're already seeing, you know, the DoD partnering directly with OpenAI, for example. Autonomous surveillance systems, I think, are going to grow faster than anyone is currently predicting. And every country is going to begin building its own private, secure LLMs. ([Time 0:08:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2eaa2d80-1736-458e-825f-b73add5a5a61))