Perplexity Teams With Valarian to Run AI Search in Customer-Controlled Environments

Perplexity has partnered with British startup Valarian to offer its AI search tools in customer-controlled computing environments, aimed at government and enterprise users that need tighter control over data and execution. Techday reported the agreement on October 29, 2026.

How Valarian's ACRA Platform Works

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.

Valarian said ACRA allows customers to decide which models and tools are deployed, what they can access and where individual workloads run. 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, said the tie-up will make its products available in more environments where governance requirements have limited adoption. Kanishka Narayan, Minister for Artificial Intelligence in the UK Government, said: "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."

Max Buchan, chief executive and founder of Valarian, said: "The first wave of AI adoption was about access - the next wave will be about control." CityAM reported on October 20, 2026 that Perplexity had agreed to deploy its AI in UK government and defence systems via Valarian, which raised $50 million in July.

Perplexity's Enterprise Push

According to akta.pro company records, Perplexity launched Computer for Counsel in June 2026, a vertical AI product for legal teams that integrates with Microsoft 365, Google Drive, Box, DocuSign, Clio and NetDocuments. The same records list a June 2026 partnership with DocuSign, whose Intelligent Agreement Management platform is integrated with Perplexity Computer and Computer for Counsel.

Perplexity said many of its business users are in sectors where information control is central to their operations, including finance, science and law. Kupp said: "Perplexity's enterprise customers are concentrated in industries where the data is the business: finance, science and law."

Perplexity's Recent Product and Research Moves

On October 20, 2026, Perplexity added a local-first Computer mode to its Mac app, letting tasks run entirely on-device without internet, 9to5Mac reported. The mode uses Qwen 3.6 and PPLX Pro, is available to Pro, Max and Enterprise subscribers, and works with native Mac apps like Notes and Messages.

Perplexity Research and NVIDIA introduced JOLT on October 21, 2026, a joint on-policy learning and teaching method that matched GRPO accuracy on the MATH benchmark using 6.5 times fewer training tokens, Crypto Briefing reported. On October 27, 2026, Perplexity published a guide on LLM gateways explaining how they route, authenticate, cache and log model calls, Unite.AI reported.

Valarian's Funding and Reach

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