Valarian, a sovereign infrastructure startup, has raised £37 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Lightbank, XTX Ventures, Litquidity Ventures, Sequel and angel investors Gokul Rajaram and Nikesh Arora. The round brings total funding raised to £52 million and marks NEA's first defence and dual-use investment in Europe. Built for high-consequence operations and AI-driven systems, the platform forms the sovereign infrastructure layer beneath the applications and workloads organisations depend on.
For years, sovereign level control was achieved through bespoke infrastructure built by defence organisations and a small number of highly regulated institutions, and as AI becomes operationally critical that requirement is becoming universal. Concentration of critical systems and AI infrastructure among a small number of providers has extended from cloud compute into the intelligence layer itself. At a technical level, workload-level governance is provided across the environments where critical applications, AI systems and operational workloads run. Organisations retain control over how those systems communicate, access data and operate, while governance is enforced at the infrastructure layer and inherited automatically by every deployed capability.
European defence spending reached €392 billion in 2025. NEA's investment thesis centres on backing foundational infrastructure companies at the moment a market demands a new layer, and the firm's decision to make Valarian its first defence and dual-use investment in Europe reflects a clear read that sovereign infrastructure is that layer. The $50 million round has drawn support from the highest levels of the United Kingdom government, recognition that Valarian's work sits at the intersection of economic competitiveness and national security. As NATO allies accelerate spending on AI-enabled capabilities, the question of which infrastructure those capabilities ultimately depend on, and who controls it, has moved from procurement offices into national security councils. Founded by Max Buchan and Josh McLaughlin, the business is headquartered in London.
Funding will be used to accelerate two deployment tracks. Valarian Enterprise serves organisations deploying AI and other high-consequence workloads that require workload-level governance, compartmentalisation and operational control. Valarian Defence serves sovereign nations and defence programmes operating mission-critical workloads where control is non-negotiable.
The intelligence layer of Western institutions is consolidating: quietly, contract by contract, department by department, into systems those institutions do not control. 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.
The critical question of the AI era isn't which model wins - it's who controls the environment intelligence operates inside. Valarian answers that question with genuine defence-grade architecture. This is NEA's first defence and dual-use investment in Europe, and we made it because Valarian is building the control infrastructure layer the sovereign AI era requires.
Today, AI is the defining currency of both hard and soft power. To shape our own destiny, in accordance with our values, it is imperative that we build Britain's sovereign AI capabilities. Pioneering British firms like Valarian understand the challenge that's in front of us and are building the solutions that will help us deliver a safer and stronger Britain. Investments like these are helping to keep the UK at the frontier of AI development, and complement the work we're doing through our Sovereign AI Fund, AI Hardware Plan and more to build Britain's AI strengths.
