Valarian

Valarian, founded in 2020 and headquartered in London, builds secure, compartmentalised infrastructure for organisations operating in high-trust, high-stakes environments. Its product, ACRA, is a hardened, governed Kubernetes backbone designed to run and protect mission-critical applications and AI systems. ACRA wraps every workload - agent, model, or service - in policy defined once and enforced everywhere, using a seven-layer per-workload policy stack: cryptographic workload identity (SPIFFE/SPIRE), user identity, default-deny network isolation (Cilium and Istio), admission and workload policy enforcement (Kyverno and gateways), short-lived scoped secrets (Vault), per-workload messaging permissions (NATS), and audit and evidence.

The company has raised $70 million and counts hundreds of enclaves deployed across four continents. Its work spans government, defence, national security and enterprise customers, with deployments across cloud, on-premise and air-gapped environments. Technical domains include Kubernetes hardening and governance, zero-trust security architecture and AI systems governance and protection, with an emphasis on retaining customer control over AI systems, data and sensitive operations.

Valarian describes itself as mission-driven, and its team draws on backgrounds from US Special Operations, Palantir, Darktrace and other organisations where security and operational reliability are treated as non-negotiable. Investors include NEA, Scout Ventures and IQ Capital, firms focused on defence and national security.