British Palantir competitor raises £41m amid scramble for sovereign AI capability
A home-grown British AI software company aiming to challenge the dominance of large US rivals like Palantir has received new investor backing of £41 million.
Valarian, co-founded in 2020 by a former Palantir executive, has secured the investment amid a mounting political storm over sovereign control of AI and other critical emerging technologies.
Cutting-edge AI software offered by top companies like Valarian allows major businesses, militaries or government departments to integrate AI securely, knitting together legacy systems and offering significant efficiency gains.
Valarian Founder Max Buchan said the company wants to compete with the best tech companies in the world.
He said: “The island our grandparents defended now runs on somebody else’s software. I’ve spent the last six years building Valarian to change that.
“Everyone seems to think that the country that produced Turing, broke ENIGMA and produced DeepMind has to run on foreign software. But we’ve just raised £41 million to continue to build out Europe’s sovereign, digital infrastructure from right here in London.
“Our sovereign systems, designed to protect the UK and her allies, are already deployed across four continents and we’re just getting started.”
The latest funding represents a significant boost for the company, representing almost a fourfold increase on previous investment.
It comes after growing calls for Britain to correct its reliance on US technology. Ministers called for more investment in British alternatives after the US government ordered AI-giant Anthropic to cut-off use of its leading model ‘Fable’ outside of the country earlier this year.
Palantir, which has key contracts with the Ministry of Defence and the NHS, has sought to defend its role in Britain recently after London Mayor Sadiq Khan initially sought to block the company’s pilot programme with the Met Police.
Palantir’s UK boss Louis Mosley said he welcomed scrutiny. Referring to the company’s £330million contract with the NHS, Mosley said: “Asserting there should be a British alternative is not the same as there being one.”
He added: “The NHS ran an 18-month, fully open and competitive tender for the FDP. Every major tech company bid, thirty independent evaluators assessed the field, and Palantir won. For what it’s worth, the companies that came second and third in that competition were also both American.”
Palantir’s software has seen a 6.8% increase in patients finding out whether they have cancer in 28 days, and more than 111,000 additional operations delivered – equivalent to three new hospitals a year.
But last week a second Parliamentary committee called for the company’s NHS contract to be scrapped. In a letter to the Health Secretary the committee said patient data was at risk of being misused.
One anonymous signatory to the letter, a senior data scientist, said: “A frankly mediocre software is being forced on NHS data systems at the expense of patient trust, professional integrity and the fundamental values of the NHS. How can we say we want to use software for saving lives when that same software is also used to kill and ruin lives?”
Many on the left in the UK have opposed the company over its close links to the US and Israeli Governments, with its software being used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as the Israeli Defence Force in its operations in Gaza.
The political wrangling is likely to create space in the sector for competitors, with the committee’s chair, Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran saying: “in the interest of public confidence in the NHS and the security of their medical information, we believe it is time to crack on with preparations to find an alternative.”
Valarian’s latest funding round leaves the startup well positioned to compete.
Buchan said: “Our sovereign systems, designed to protect the UK and her allies are already deployed across four continents and we’re just getting started.”