Perplexity partners Valarian on sovereign AI search

Perplexity has partnered with British startup Valarian to offer its AI search tools in customer-controlled computing environments. The move is aimed at government and enterprise users that need tighter control over data and execution.

The partnership centres on Valarian's ACRA platform, described as a sovereign control layer for AI systems operating across different infrastructure. Under the agreement, organisations will be able to run Perplexity in environments they govern, including those involving sensitive data and internal systems.

The approach is intended to address a growing challenge for large institutions as AI use expands beyond isolated pilots. As companies and public bodies deploy more models, agents and workloads across multiple systems, they face questions about where those systems run, what data they can access and who controls their operation.

Valarian said ACRA allows customers to decide which models and tools are deployed, what they can access and where individual workloads run. It added that different levels of control can be applied depending on the sensitivity of the work, with less sensitive research using externally hosted models and confidential tasks remaining within isolated infrastructure.

Perplexity, whose tools are used by more than 45 million people, has built its business around AI-assisted search and research. The tie-up will make its products available in more environments where governance requirements have limited adoption, it said.

Support for the deal came from the UK government.

"When one of the world's leading AI companies needs to deliver sovereignty to enterprise and government, it is choosing a British company to do it. That is a powerful signal of the role British firms like Valarian will play in the sovereign AI stack.

Our public sector and our most critical industries need to be able to harness AI without handing over control of how and where it operates. This partnership is exactly the kind of British sovereign AI capability I want to see flourish," said Kanishka Narayan, Minister for Artificial Intelligence, UK Government.

Funding backdrop

The agreement comes shortly after Valarian raised USD 50 million in a Series A round led by New Enterprise Associates, taking total funding to USD 70 million. The London-headquartered company said it is now deployed across four continents and serves enterprise and defence customers.

The deal also gives Valarian a prominent commercial partner as demand grows for what the sector calls sovereign AI, in which organisations seek to use advanced models without ceding operational control to outside providers. That issue has become more pressing for defence bodies, regulated industries and public sector users handling confidential or strategically sensitive information.

Max Buchan outlined Valarian's view of the market in a statement on the partnership.

"The first wave of AI adoption was about access - the next wave will be about control.

Organisations handling some of the world's most sensitive data should not have to choose between using the best AI available and retaining control over the intelligence powering their operations.

I'm proud this partnership is about changing that. Perplexity has built one of the most useful AI experiences in the world, and together we are bringing sovereign intelligence to scale - giving organisations access to leading AI on their own terms, while keeping control over their data, infrastructure and how that intelligence operates," said Max Buchan, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Valarian.

Enterprise demand

Perplexity said many of its business users are in sectors where information control is central to their operations, including finance, science and law. In those industries, barriers to adoption often relate less to whether AI is useful and more to questions of hosting, execution and data handling.

"Perplexity's enterprise customers are concentrated in industries where the data is the business: finance, science and law. For many of them, the usefulness of AI was settled a long time ago. What's held them back is where it runs and who controls it. Working with Valarian, we can bring Perplexity inside more of those environments, on infrastructure the customer governs. For institutions where control over execution and data isn't optional, that changes what's possible," said Kupp.