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-born 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

✓ 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.

Have some news for us? Send any updates to 30under30tipline@forbes.com.