Zurich-based cybersecurity company Soverli has raised €2.2 million ($2.6 million) in pre-Seed funding to introduce a sovereign smartphone architecture that works alongside Android and iOS.
The round was led by Founderful, with backing from the ETH Zurich Foundation and Venture Kick, as well as prominent figures from the cybersecurity industry. In September, the company secured €161k from Venture Kick.
“Availability is mission-critical, yet organisations still rely on operating systems they cannot control or audit. We built a fully-auditable smartphone sovereign layer that stays operational even when Android is compromised. It’s a paradigm shift: instead of hoping the OS never breaks, Soverli guarantees continuity if it does, without forcing users to give up the modern smartphone experience they expect,” said Ivan Puddu, co-founder and CEO of Soverli.
In 2025, EU-Startups reported a growing number of funding rounds in the cybersecurity domain, but none of them were explicitly in the area of mobile security and sovereignty. Just last week, Antwerp-based XFA raised €1.5 million to build a safety net for the modern, hybrid, and AI-native workplace. This month, Paris-based Evertrust raised €10 million to scale its sovereign Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM) software suite. Again in December, Equixly, a Verona-based cybersecurity startup using agentic AI to automate API security testing, raised €10 million in Series A funding. Taken together, these December deals underscore the growing investor interest in identity, trust, and infrastructure-level cybersecurity.
ETH Zurich spin-off Soverli provides a patent-pending platform that packs multiple fully isolated phones into one device. The company claims that its methodology enables multiple operating systems (OS) to run in isolation simultaneously on a single device, effectively turning every commercial phone into sovereign infrastructure.
“For the first time, a fully sovereign, customizable, and auditable OS can run in parallel to Android — on any smartphone, with zero trade-offs: users keep the full Android experience on one OS and can switch to the sovereign OS in milliseconds at the press of a button,” says the company in a statement.
As a technical demonstration, the company showcased the secure messaging app Signal running inside its sovereign OS. The company claims that Signal’s messages remain confidential and protected even if Android is compromised or infected with malware, as the app has been isolated completely from Android and the attack surface has been reduced by 500×. Soverli does not require any hardware modification and can, therefore, be used on today’s commercial smartphones.
The company’s value proposition lies in its ability to offer sovereign-grade security without sacrificing usability, especially at a time when heightened geopolitical uncertainty and AI-driven systemic digital risk are putting unprecedented pressure on existing digital infrastructure.
According to Soverli, the first application is built for mission-critical communication. It mentions that public sector pilots are underway with organisations responsible for emergency response and critical infrastructure, where availability is considered non-negotiable. Soverli claims that even in situations such as major outages, where Android fails, its enabled isolated environment keeps running on its own dedicated software stack.
Beyond the public sector, its ability to allow secure messaging apps to run inside an isolated environment has also garnered interest from journalists and human rights workers. Enterprises are exploring Soverli for securing their bring-your-own-device programmes. It offers employees a protected work environment without the privacy trade-offs associated with traditional device management systems.
With this funding, Soverli aims to grow its engineering team, extend compatibility to more smartphone models, strengthen integrations with mobile device management systems, and scale partnerships with OEMs.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2025/12/zurich-based-soverli-raises-e2-2-million-bring-sovereign-security-everyday-smartphones/
