{"podcast":{"title":"Scaling Europe","slug":"scaling-europe-7780754","podcast_index_feed_id":7780754,"rss_url":"https://anchor.fm/s/108a8a74c/podcast/rss","website_url":"https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scaling-europe","image_url":"https://d3t3ozftmdmh3i.cloudfront.net/staging/podcast_uploaded_nologo/44302379/44302379-1756114015030-846dc0246eba9.jpg","author":"Sebastian Johnson","episode_count":223,"summary":"Every week Seb Johnson sits down with 5 of Europe's best builders and investors to talk about what's going on in European Tech. Prior guests include the founders of Lovable, Cleo, Voi an Zilch, as well as top VCs from 20VC, Index, Balderton and Creandum.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-27T22:17:10.818712+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-europe-7780754"},"episode":{"title":"Max Buchan, CEO of Valarian: BREAKING: Valarian raised $50m Series A","slug":"max-buchan-ceo-of-valarian-breaking-valarian-raised-50m-series-a","published_at":"2026-07-14T07:21:30+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-europe-7780754/max-buchan-ceo-of-valarian-breaking-valarian-raised-50m-series-a","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-europe-7780754","url":"https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scaling-europe/episodes/Max-Buchan--CEO-of-Valarian-BREAKING-Valarian-raised-50m-Series-A-e3m1ctr","audio_url":"https://anchor.fm/s/108a8a74c/podcast/play/122777979/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-6-13%2F427880655-44100-2-43ac19e2017b.mp3","summary":"Valarian has raised a $50m Series A led by NEA, just over a year after a $20m Seed. The company built Acra, an infrastructure layer that lets organizations run sensitive AI systems securely on any cloud, from public cloud to on-prem or the edge. Max Buchan is Founder and CEO of Valarian. The company signed $43m in contracts in its first quarter alone and expects to do about $100m this year. The Scaling Europe show is presented by Deel. Check them out here: https://get.deel.com/ruynb7o4lfjk Sponsors: Chargebee: https://www.chargebee.com/events/beelieve/london/2026 SurrealDB: https://surrealdb.com/ Airwallex: https://www.airwallex.com/uk?utm_source=other&utm_medium=partner_referral&utm_campaign=v01_emea_multi_ib_dg_prtmk_mofu_scalingeurope Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 0:16 - Valarian's $50m Series A led by NEA 2:06 - What Acra actually does 2:51 - Enterprise and defence customers 4:52 - Why sovereignty matters to customers 6:44 - Where the growth is coming from 7:49 - Inside the Series A round 9:37 - UK government support and new investors 11:38 - Plans for the next 6 to 12 months 16:09 - The biggest risk: hiring and execution 18:01 - Bringing on a new head of revenue","meta_description":"Valarian has raised a $50m Series A led by NEA, just over a year after a $20m Seed. The company built Acra, an infrastructure layer that lets organization…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1316,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/scaling-europe-7780754/episodes/max-buchan-ceo-of-valarian-breaking-valarian-raised-50m-series-a/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-europe-7780754/max-buchan-ceo-of-valarian-breaking-valarian-raised-50m-series-a.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}