AI infrastructure firm Valarian raises £37.3m

Valarian has closed a $50m (£37.3m) Series A funding round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). 

Valarian is a UK-based sovereign infrastructure company building a control layer for high-consequence operations and AI-driven systems. 

Its platform, used by enterprise and defence firms, enables organisations to retain control over how critical applications, AI systems and operational workloads communicate, access data and operate while enforcing governance at the infrastructure layer.

Valerian says sovereign level control has long been achieved through bespoke infrastructure built by defence organisations and a small number of highly regulated institutions. As AI becomes operationally critical, that requirement is becoming universal. 

The firm says it is building the infrastructure layer that brings that control to modern software environments.

The funding will be used to accelerate Valarian’s two deployment tracks – Valarian Enterprise, which serves organisations deploying AI and other high-consequence workloads that require workload-level governance, compartmentalisation and operational control; and Valarian Defence for sovereign nations and defence programmes operating mission-critical workloads where control is non-negotiable.

The round marks NEA’s first defence and dual-use investment in Europe. Lightbank, XTX Ventures, Litquidity Ventures, Sequel, as well as angel investors Gokul Rajaram and Nikesh Arora, also participated in the round.

“The intelligence layer of Western institutions is consolidating: quietly, contract by contract, department by department, into systems those institutions do not control,” says Max Buchan, CEO and co-founder of Valarian. 

“We built Valarian because sovereignty isn’t a feature you can add later – it’s architecture you have to build from the ground up. This round gives us the capital to take that architecture to the organisations that need it most, at the moment they need it most.”