A London startup co-founded by a former Palantir executive has raised $50m to help governments and companies use American cloud and AI without letting America reach inside. The fear driving it stopped being hypothetical this year.
Valarian, a London-based sovereignty startup, has raised a $50m (£37m) Series A led by the US venture fund NEA, Fortune first reported. It is NEA’s first defence and dual-use investment in Europe, and it takes Valarian’s total funding to $70m.
The company sells one specific promise: keep using Amazon or Microsoft cloud, but stay in control of it.
A sealed room around your AI #
Valarian’s software, called ACRA, sits underneath an organisation’s AI systems like a sealed operating room. Governments and businesses can run their workloads on American infrastructure, while Valarian’s layer decides exactly what data can leave, who can touch it, and who can switch it off.
The reason that matters has a name: the US CLOUD Act. It lets American authorities compel US-based companies to hand over data they hold anywhere in the world. Co-founder Max Buchan’s argument is that sovereignty cannot be a setting inside someone else’s system. “It has to be the infrastructure itself”, he told Fortune.
Valarian was founded in 2020 by Buchan, a former fintech and crypto executive, and Josh McLaughlin, a former US army officer and Palantir managing director. Alongside NEA, its backers include XTX, the trading firm run by the billionaire Alex Gerko.
The moment the fear got real #
For years, infrastructure sovereignty was an abstract worry. This year it turned concrete. When the Trump administration cut off access to Anthropic’s models abroad, the point landed hard. “No one could use their model anymore, because the president of another country had shut it off”, Buchan said.
Britain has spent months absorbing that lesson. An incoming prime minister is moving to cancel a state Palantir contract, the Telegraph reported. MPs on the science and technology committee warned the government risked “having its access cut off at the whim of its partners”. The worry now has a kill-switch shape to it.
Government wants a home-grown option #
Ministers are keen to be seen backing British answers. Defence minister Luke Pollard said the country needs “more innovative British companies like Valarian”. AI minister Kanishka Narayan called building sovereign AI capability “imperative”.
Buchan wants that support to go further. Britain should not buy something “second-rate simply because it’s British”, he said, but when capabilities match, ministers should back the home-grown option for the jobs and investment it keeps onshore.
The pitch to investors #
Valarian is part of a wave of startups selling control to nervous governments and firms, promising AI that runs inside their own walls. Part of its appeal to backers is that it is software, not hardware.
NEA’s Mustafa Neemuchwala, who led the round, put it plainly. Valarian avoids the classic defence-startup risk. “If this company fails, it’s not going to be because they overspent on a production facility”, he said. No factories, no missiles, just the layer between a government’s secrets and the American clouds they still run on.
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