Meet Arlan Rakhmetzhanov, young entrepreneur whose first AI product failed, his startup Nozomio later raised $6.2 million

Arlan Rakhmetzhanov had a problem with the AI coding tool he was building. It was supposed to help developers work with software code, but the product struggled with issues such as different software versions and limited context windows. His startup, Nozomio, moved towards helping AI tools find the information they need to work more effectively.

The company initially worked on an AI coding agent designed to help developers understand software projects. However, Rakhmetzhanov found that the product struggled with problems such as software version and limited context windows.

Who is Arlan Rakhmetzhanov?

Rakhmetzhanov is the founder of Nozomio, an AI startup that has changed its focus since its early days.
He launched an education technology startup when he was 15. The product attracted 20,000 users. He also said he secured research work at Stanford University through cold emails when he was 16.

He later left high school and moved to London to raise funding for Nozomio. The company subsequently joined Y Combinator’s Summer 2025 batch, a programme to support early-stage startups.

Why did his first AI product fail?

Nozomio at first worked as an AI coding agent. It was designed to help developers understand software projects. It is to be noted that building a tool that could reliably work with complex code turned out to be difficult.
According to reports, the product struggled with software versions and limited context windows.Rakhmetzhanov later built something else and decided it was time to change the approach.

What did he build next?

The startup developed Nia, a tool that indexes code repositories and documentation so AI coding assistants can retrieve information when needed.

This approach allows existing AI tools to search project files and external documentation instead of relying only on the information already available to them.

Nia was designed to work with coding assistants including Cursor, Continue and Cline. The idea was to improve the information these tools could access while helping developers work with unfamiliar codebases.

Nozomio raised $850,000 in a pre-seed funding round led by LocalGlobe in May 2025. It then secured $6.2 million in a seed round led by CRV in October that year. BoxGroup, LocalGlobe and other investors also backed the company.