London-based Nia, an AI platform focused on developing autonomous engineering agents, has secured $850K (nearly €747,670) in a pre-seed funding round.
The round was led by LocalGlobe, with contributions from No Label Ventures, Andrena Ventures, Ventures Together, Eurasian Hub Ventures, and Artificial Societies (part of YC W25).
Emma Phillips, Partner at LocalGlobe, says, “Arlan is one of the most driven founders we’ve met – teaching himself to code, shipping multiple products, cold-emailing his way into Stanford, and building Nia entirely on his own before even turning 18.”
“He’s not just building a better AI tool; he’s setting the standard for what AI teammates can be. All while laying the foundations for a business where the most ambitious developers will want to work.”
Nia will use the funds to support the expansion of its technical team, including the hiring of a founding engineer for backend AI infrastructure. The funds will also be used to refine Nia’s core agent capabilities and expand access to engineering teams globally.
AI-centric platform for the next-gen software engineers
Nia was founded by an 18-year-old and two-time founder, Arlan Rakhmetzhanov, who taught himself to code in high school in Kazakhstan.
After launching several products, including an education platform, Rakhmetzhanov became frustrated with the limitations of current AI coding tools. He felt that while tools like ChatGPT were good for simple tasks, they couldn’t scale or manage complex codebases.
Other tools like Cursor and Windsurf could integrate AI into workflows, but were limited in scope and understanding.
Recognising that developers spent too much time managing AI instead of coding, Rakhmetzhanov joined a research role under Stanford professor Ilya Strebulaev. He set out to create Nia, an AI teammate that acts like a colleague, understanding codebases deeply and supporting developers beyond basic assistance.
Rakhmetzhanov says, “Every AI coding assistant I tried, forgot where things lived in my repository – spitting out files that didn’t follow my patterns, duplicating logic, or hallucinating. I wanted to build an AI teammate that actually remembered my project, pointed me to the right places, and let me skip the busywork; an assistant that understood my code as well as I did.”
“This was the inspiration behind Nia, and it’s built on a simple idea: stop fighting your tools and let them help you build.”
Nia can build real-time models of any codebase and link large amounts of code across projects into a single knowledge graph.
Developers can query Nia through various platforms, receiving quick, context-aware answers. This allows them to automate tasks like navigating new systems and connecting logic across projects, while speeding up onboarding.
Nia is designed to support developers as a teammate, helping them become productive faster and making knowledge easily accessible, reducing onboarding time. Nia claims to enhance developers’ abilities rather than replacing them.
Nia’s beta launch
Nia has been launched in beta, offering several features for developers. Engineers can query multiple repositories at once without leaving their terminal. With Slack integration, new team members can tag @Nia for quick insights, aiding onboarding.
Nia’s MCP server enhances its understanding of large projects by adding context for agents supporting the protocol. A unified API also allows teams to integrate Nia into their systems and create custom workflows and automations.
