Molten Ventures leads seed round in Worldr

In November 2023, Worldr rebranded to Valarian. You can read more on that here.

We are pleased to announce that Molten has led a funding round in Worldr – the zero trust architecture for the world’s most popular communications platforms – bringing the company's total seed funding to $11 million.

This new capital will enable Worldr to meet the growing demand for its zero trust architecture, which empowers organisations to retain data sovereignty over information shared on communication and collaboration platforms, such as Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Outlook and Slack.

The new funding round was led by Molten, with continued support from IQ Capital and Playfair Capital. It also saw specialist funds join, such as Pretiosum Ventures, Navigate VC and national security-focused MD One Ventures. The company will use the funding to pursue its mission of creating a software-agnostic architecture that will sit across an organisation’s entire environment to maintain data sovereignty, while prioritising the development of use cases that solve the most pressing challenges organisations face.

Worldr will expand its presence in the US with a dedicated office in New York City that will support the company’s ongoing relationship with Microsoft and is also expanding its operations into the Middle East, including building a dedicated team based in Dubai. The Worldr architecture offers enterprise-level security and compliance by storing all communications and files within the customer’s own environment. Bypassing a third-party provider’s own servers allows organisations to retain full ownership of their enterprise data, so employees can continue using the platforms they love without the added risk to their data.

This immediate need to overcome the compliance and auditing issues introduced by the use of WhatsApp in regulated industries has driven the launch of Worldr for WhatsApp. This comes as financial regulators in the US and UK are clamping down on the use of private messaging applications, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issuing a total of $1.8bn in fines across 16 US banking institutions.

Commenting on the announcement, Max Buchan, Chief Executive Officer at Worldr, said “Data sovereignty has never been more important. The increase in cyberattacks, data localisation requirements, and scrutiny from regulators mean that it is no longer enough to blindly trust that collaboration platforms are keeping business communications secure and compliant. Companies rightfully want control of their data to protect themselves against operational, reputational and regulatory risk. “This has not only fuelled demand for our zero trust architecture for Microsoft Teams, but we are also being challenged to apply this solution across an organisation’s entire software environment. This funding will be critical to helping us further this mission and scale to meet the demand.”

Leonora Ross-Skinner, Investor at Molten Ventures said: “The move towards zero trust and data sovereignty is becoming critical for any entity which deals with sensitive information. Worldr’s unique product set optimises for privacy, security and data protection with seamless integration into existing enterprise software. Crucially, with Worldr, data is controlled by the enterprise itself, marking an incredibly important step forward in data sovereignty. “Having made several investments in the cyber and privacy space we really look forward to working with Max, his world-class team and our esteemed fellow investors to build a category-leading company with the fundamentals of security at its core."