Valarian Technologies, a London-based defence-focused AI infrastructure startup, has raised $50 million in Series A funding to target the sovereign AI market.

SiliconANGLE reported on Monday local time that the round was led by New Enterprise Associates, its first investment in a European defence-industry startup. Lightbank, XTX Markets, Sequoia and LitVC also participated. Gokul Rajaram and Nikesh Arora were also listed as angel investors.

Valarian supplies AI infrastructure aimed at sensitive computing environments for government agencies and regulated industries. It was co-founded by Max Buchan and Josh McLoughlin, a former Palantir executive and ex-U.S. Army officer. The company aims to provide a workload-level control framework in environments that run AI systems, mission-critical applications and key infrastructure.

Its core platform, ACRA, is designed to let organisations directly control how critical software operates, data access and communications with other platforms. It was originally developed for compartmentalised computing and data operations and targets demand from government agencies and companies that must completely separate shared environments even for systems hosted on public clouds.

As AI adoption rises across European countries, there has also been growing momentum to reduce reliance on a small number of large U.S. technology companies. European defence spending in 2025 exceeded 392 billion euros, and a significant amount of that was reported to have been invested in AI-based systems. Defence agencies and regulated industries have also preferred on-premises environments to public clouds to secure sovereign-level control.

Valarian offers Valarian Enterprise for commercial customers and Valarian Defense for military and defence agencies. Valarian Defense focuses on helping national militaries and defence bodies build computing environments that minimise risk.

The British government has also stressed strengthening its sovereign AI capabilities. Kanishka Narayan (카니시카 나라얀), Britain's minister for AI and online safety, said AI technology has become a core asset of hard power and soft power and set out the need to build Britain's sovereign AI capabilities. Mustafa Nimuchwala (무스타파 니무치왈라), a partner at New Enterprise Associates, said the next key layer of corporate and government computing is sovereign infrastructure.