{"slug": "exclusive-optiak-raises-eur4m-to-build-an-orchestration-layer-for-enterprise-ai", "title": "Optiak raises €4m to build an orchestration layer for enterprise AI", "summary": "Optiak, a startup building a modular operating system for enterprise AI, raised €4m ($4.7m) in a pre-seed round led by Market One Capital, Next Tier Ventures, EA Ventures, Plug and Play EMEA Fund, and Mission. The company aims to solve the problem of 'shadow AI' by providing an orchestration layer that governs security, governance, memory, observability, and cost optimization across all AI applications. Founded in 2025 by Daniel Arenas, Ignacio Gamoneda, and Borja Balle, the company claims this is the second-largest enterprise-AI round recorded in Spain in 2026.", "body_md": "*Optiak, a startup building what it calls a modular operating system for enterprise AI, has come out of stealth with a €4m pre-seed round, about $4.7m, led by Market One Capital, Next Tier Ventures, EA Ventures Plug and Play EMEA Fund and Mission. The company, the founders say, is trying to solve a problem most large organisations have walked into rather than chosen: a sprawl of AI tools that nobody is governing as a single system.*\n\nThe pitch is an intermediary layer. [Optiak](https://www.optiak.com/) sits between any AI application a company runs, a chatbot, an agent, a workflow, and the models underneath, giving a single point where security, governance, memory, observability, and cost optimisation are configured once rather than rebuilt app by app.\n\nIn practice, the company says, that means corporate policies can block an IP or security risk before an employee sends anything to a third-party model, and the platform can then route the request to whichever permitted model answers best for the lowest cost.\n\nThe problem it is aimed at has a name and some numbers behind it. “Shadow AI,” employees reaching for tools without IT oversight, has produced internal data leaks at 46% of organisations, according to Cisco’s 2025 research, and unsanctioned AI now accounts for roughly [one in five breaches](https://www.kiteworks.com/cybersecurity-risk-management/ibm-2025-data-breach-report-ai-risks/) in IBM’s 2025 breach report.\n\nThe alternative many firms reach for, rigid centralisation on a single provider, trades that risk for vendor lock-in and cost, which is the bind Optiak says its neutral layer is meant to escape.\n\nThe founders bring the kind of CVs that open enterprise doors. Optiak is led by co-chief executives Daniel Arenas and Ignacio Gamoneda, with Borja Balle as chief technology officer; Balle was previously a senior researcher at Google DeepMind and Amazon, known for work on differential privacy at scale. The wider team draws on experience at Amazon, Google, and DeepMind.\n\n*“The first wave of AI adoption was based on isolated solutions,”* said Arenas, co-founder and co-chief executive. *“Now, companies need governance, intelligent management, security and observability to function as a unified system.” *\n\nBalle framed the technical thesis as compounding: connect a whole corporate ecosystem into one shared layer, he argued, and every gain in latency, cost, or security stops being local and starts accumulating across the organisation.\n\nThe round was led by Market One Capital with Next Tier Ventures, Plug and Play, and Mission, and backed by investors linked to SpaceX, Stripe, CrowdStrike, Amazon, and Epic Games.\n\nOptiak, founded in 2025, Spanish-founded and EU-focused, called it the second-largest enterprise-AI round recorded in Spain in 2026, a claim it attributes to itself. Alongside the funding, it opened a Design Partner Programme for a small group of companies to co-design large-scale use cases with the founding team.\n\nThe product thesis is clear; whether enterprises adopt a new control layer rather than consolidating on a provider they already pay is the test ahead.\n\n## Get the TNW newsletter\n\nGet the most important tech news in your inbox each week.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/exclusive-optiak-raises-eur4m-to-build-an-orchestration-layer-for-enterprise-ai", "canonical_source": "https://thenextweb.com/news/optiak-raises-e4m-to-build-an-orchestration-layer-for-enterprise-ai", "published_at": "2026-06-16 07:00:39+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-16 07:51:04.515448+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-infrastructure", "ai-safety", "ai-startups"], "entities": ["Optiak", "Market One Capital", "Next Tier Ventures", "EA Ventures", "Plug and Play EMEA Fund", "Mission", "Daniel Arenas", "Ignacio Gamoneda"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/exclusive-optiak-raises-eur4m-to-build-an-orchestration-layer-for-enterprise-ai", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/exclusive-optiak-raises-eur4m-to-build-an-orchestration-layer-for-enterprise-ai.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/exclusive-optiak-raises-eur4m-to-build-an-orchestration-layer-for-enterprise-ai.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/exclusive-optiak-raises-eur4m-to-build-an-orchestration-layer-for-enterprise-ai.jsonld"}}