Tuesday 10 February 2026 8:05 am

Second Front Systems and Valarian Form Strategic Partnership to Accelerate Sovereign Defence Software Deployment Across UK and Europe

Second Front Systems (2F), a proven leader in accelerating the adoption and delivery of commercial technology for defence in the U.S. and allied nations, today announced a strategic partnership with Valarian, the U.K.-based sovereign infrastructure company behind ACRA, a platform engineered to enforce control over data, access, and compute.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260210236391/en/

The timing is critical. While European defence spending undergoes its most significant expansion in decades, rising to €392 billion in 2025, a 79% increase from €218 billion in 2021, European fragmentation has historically undermined cost-effectiveness.

“Modern operations demand more than updated software; they demand controlled environments,” said Enrique Oti, Chief Strategy Officer at Second Front. “Partnering with Valarian allows us to extend those guarantees into sovereign contexts in the UK, EU, and beyond, enabling customers to deploy complex software stacks without external dependency.”

The partnership unites Second Front’s Game Warden ® platform, proven in rapidly delivering secure, compliant software into U.S. and allied classified environments, with Valarian’s sovereign enclave architecture, designed to ensure sensitive systems operate seamlessly without bleed.

“European defence institutions aren’t just increasing budgets, they’re demanding infrastructure they can command end-to-end,” said Max Buchan, CEO and Co-Founder of Valarian. “Second Front shares our view: sovereignty isn’t a feature, its architecture. As nations invest billions into capabilities they must control absolutely, the providers who eliminate dependency, not manage around it, will define the next generation of defence infrastructure.”

Valarian’s technology ensures sensitive systems do not “phone home,” creating independently controlled sovereign enclaves where mission-critical applications can run with full confidence in their integrity. This complements 2F’s ability to rapidly bring commercial innovation into defence environments while maintaining robust assurance and compliance standards.

Together, 2F and Valarian are enabling a new generation of sovereign-by-design digital solutions with controlled deployment pathways, compartmentalized environments, and audit-first infrastructure that aligns with European security, jurisdictional, and accreditation requirements while maintaining the speed and flexibility of commercial innovation.

About Second Front Systems

Second Front Systems Limited (2F) is the UK arm of Second Front Systems, a defence technology company founded to accelerate the secure delivery of software to allied nations worldwide. 2F provides proven, integrated solutions that enable the rapid deployment of mission-critical commercial software—from mission planning and training systems to cybersecurity tools, productivity software, and secure large-language models.

Assured by the UK Ministry of Defence and NATO, 2F strengthens digital sovereignty and allied interoperability by reducing the need for reapproval, compliance review, or technical rework, ensuring secure software reaches the mission faster.

About Valarian

Valarian builds infrastructure for organisations operating in high-trust, high-stakes environments. Our core product, ACRA, is a secure, compartmentalised backbone designed to run and protect mission-critical applications — now proven at the edge in portable GPU clusters as well as in the cloud and on-premise. We developed ACRA when existing infrastructure failed to meet real-world risk — where segmentation breaks down, audit trails disappear, and lateral movement cannot be contained.

Valarian is a UK-founded and UK-led company, and backed by leading defence and national security investors. We are a team with backgrounds across defence, secure communications, high-assurance systems, and enterprise software — engineers and operators who have worked in environments where a lost signal or a missed audit can carry real consequences. We design like users because we’ve been them.