Latest news with #Valarian
Bloomberg
23-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Valarian CEO Max Buchan on Defense Data Security
UK tech startup Valarian is on a mission to change the handling of sensitive defense and national security information. CEO and co-founder Max Buchan spoke to Bloomberg's Tom Mackenzie on May 19th. (Source: Bloomberg)
Forbes
09-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Backed By Palantir Investors, This Under 30 Has $20 Million In Funding To Secure The Government's Data
Think this is nice? It's a version of the weekly Under 30 newsletter and would be even better in your inbox. Josh McLaughlin an Max Buchan, cofounders of Valarian Remember back in March, when The Atlantic's editor-in-chief was accidentally added to a Signal chat where senior government officials—including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—were discussing plans to strike Yemen? It wasn't just the leak that raised eyebrows. The bigger shock was that such high-level national security discussions were taking place on Signal—a consumer-grade encrypted messaging app. While unsettling, it's also not entirely unusual. Government officials and business leaders have been reported to use encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp. That's exactly the kind of vulnerability Forbes Under 30 Europe alum Max Buchan wants to address with his cybersecurity startup Valarian, which this week re-emerged from stealth. Buchan founded London-based Valarian in 2019 with a simple idea: build a proprietary secure messenger specifically for large companies to use. But after struggling to gain traction, he went quiet and pivoted, reimagining the product and its purpose. The result is ACRA, a platform designed to add an extra layer of data protection and encryption on top of existing apps. 'Think of them as secure bubbles. What those bubbles do is they compartmentalize and silo the data,' Buchan explains. 'We're basically creating really secure, safe spaces even within public clouds where businesses can conduct and exchange data.' Though initially focused on enterprises (for example: a tech company that uses Slack for inter-office communication could encrypt what happens on Slack using ACRA), Buchan saw an opportunity to build something that governments— specifically defense departments—could use. To make it happen, Buchan tapped Josh McLaughlin, a former U.S. Army officer and executive of the publicly traded (and often controversial) intelligence company Palantir to join the startup as a cofounder. McLaughlin's network led them to investors with deep defense expertise. Valarian's recent $7 million funding round, co-led by Artis Ventures (an early backer of Palantir) and Scout Ventures, brings the startup's total funding to $20 million. 'As founders, we all like making great products and it's even better when you make great products that find a great market,' Buchan says. 'But when you start building stuff that has an effect on western democratic freedoms, it's an element of 'This stuff we're doing is really important, not just for us as a business, but actually for the belief systems we all have.'' The company is already working with U.S. government agencies, although Buchan declined to disclose which ones exactly. Now the British founder wants to focus on European expansion.'There's a massive opportunity here to bring capabilities back into the hands of Europeans,' he says. See you next week, Alex & Zoya . Enough talk about a four-day-work-week…how about seven?! These startups make it clear in their recruitment process that working for them isn't for everyone. In fact, 'it's almost for no one,' according to one job listing. But one founder says constant work spurts, broken up by naps instead of weekends, is what keeps his startup going. Check out a week inside these AI startups here. -Julie Blanc, who made the 30 Under 30 Sports list in 2020, announced this week a $5 million seed funding round for her first company, Rentana. She launched the AI-powered real estate platform, which helps property owners and operators optimize their revenue, in 2023. She initially made the Under 30 list as the director of corporate development at Drone Racing League. -Under 30 Retail & Ecommerce alumna Chelsea Parke and fellow influencer-turned-founder Cass Dimicco released a collaborative collection this week. Parke launched her eponymous denim brand (which now includes t-shirts, sweats and more) in 2022. And Dimiccio's Aureum is best known for its belts and other accessories. Their new collab line ranges from a $45 baseball hat to $100 earrings, a $180 pair of jeans, and more. -Trilobio, a startup cofounded by Under 30 Manufacturing & Industry listers Roya Amini-Naieni and Maximilian Schommer to improve synthetic biology and life science research, closed $8 million in seed funding, bringing their total funding to $11 million. The funding will go toward building their fully automated 'robot-in-a-box' and other lab devices to make the scientific research process more efficient. What young people should know about this week, according to Forbes senior editor Alex Knapp. He covers science, healthcare and technology, ranging from profiles of entrepreneurs to deep dives into technological trends. ✓ Think twice before trusting an answer from AI. Research shows that advanced "reasoning" LLMs are even more prone to hallucinating wrong answers than previous models, sometimes up to 79% of the time. ✓ Training for long races like a marathon? Make food part of your routine. A new study of endurance athletes found that those who didn't eat enough calories during the preseason had slower running times during the competitive season. So go for seconds on that mac and cheese. ✓ New technology will keep livestock healthier. The FDA has approved a gene-edited pig for human consumption. Produced by the Pig Improvement Company, they have been genetically modified to resist a highly contagious disease called Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory syndrome.
Business Insider
08-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
This new Palantir-alumni-founded startup wants to help governments and companies control their data
Managing sensitive data across borders can be tricky. Valarian cofounders Max Buchan and Josh McLaughlin experienced that firsthand after working at crypto company CoinShares and defense tech giant Palantir, respectively. Their company, which provides data protection and management, has emerged from stealth with $7 million in additional funding, bringing its seed round to $20 million raised. National security-focused firm Scout Ventures and Artis Ventures led the round. Gokul Rajaram, a board member of Pinterest and Coinbase, also participated in the fundraise. CEO Max Buchan said the idea for Valarian came from thinking about how easily sensitive data can end up in the wrong hands. The startup's solution is ACRA, Valerian's platform that keeps data separated and tightly controlled, even when it's stored in the cloud or used by other apps. A company can use ACRA to ingest internal communications across digital platforms and retain them securely in a given domain for compliance and record-keeping purposes, for example. Buchan founded the London-based startup in 2020, and cofounder and chief operating officer McLaughlin joined in 2023. McLaughlin previously served as a ranger in the US Army and worked in business development at Palantir in Qatar, where he led the opening of the defense tech giant's Doha office. Buchan met McLaughlin in Doha and was introduced to his now cofounder through another national security-focused venture capitalist. With the new funding, Valerian plans to expand into defense, a sector that has seen a frenzy of venture investment in the months since Trump's return to office. This follows interest from its first government customer in late 2024. The company declined to disclose the client. "The government angle within the US was, 'hey, can you expand this ACRA platform to have relevance to national sovereignty?'" Buchan said. As it does with enterprise clients, Valerian's ACRA can also ingest privileged governmental communication from Signal or WhatsApp, for example, and keep it secure in a specific territory. Defense-focused investor Cody Huggins, a partner at Scout Ventures and a former ranger instructor who co-led the firm's investment in Valarian, became interested in the startup's potential to sell to the US and its allies. For this reason, Huggins backed Valarian, marking Scout Ventures' first investment in a company headquartered outside the US or Canada. "From where Valarian sits, they're positioned very well where they can sell in Europe — and they can sell across the globe — because they're a European company," Huggins told BI. "But they also can absolutely sell in the US." Huggins was also compelled by the company's stickiness with both commercial and government clients, which he said could provide some cushion against being solely defense-focused, which is "a pretty challenging space to invest in," Huggins added. Dual use — a term used in defense tech to describe a company's business application in both enterprises and governments — is becoming increasingly common among national security-focused companies looking to hedge against budget cuts to the Department of Defense and the often finicky government contracting and procurement process. Palantir, one of the most prominent dual-use examples, has both a key government business and a growing healthcare vertical. Scale AI, a startup that provides training data to companies like OpenAI, inked a deal with the Defense Department in March. Valarian competes with security companies largely in the commercial sector. Veriti, which was backed by Insight Partners and founded by Israel intelligence veterans, has its own security posture management platform. Varonis Systems, a publicly traded company, makes a data management security platform. Buchan is hoping to court government customers in the US and beyond. "We have a big US presence, but we're also able to cater to this incredibly increasing European demand," he said, "which is massive defense spending increases across continental Europe and other NATO countries."
