Soverli raises $2.6M to develop sovereign smartphone architecture

Zurich-based cybersecurity company Soverli has raised $2.6 million in pre-seed funding to develop a sovereign smartphone architecture designed to operate alongside Android and iOS for OEMs, enterprises, governments, and consumers. The round was led by Founderful, with participation from the ETH Zurich Foundation, Venture Kick, and cybersecurity industry figures.

Based on more than four years of research at ETH Zurich, Soverli’s patent-pending approach is intended to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single device while keeping them isolated. The company says this enables a customizable and auditable sovereign OS to operate in parallel with Android on standard smartphones, with users able to switch between environments quickly.

As a demonstration, Soverli showed Signal running inside its sovereign OS and said the setup isolates the app from Android and reduces the attack surface, with the goal of keeping messages confidential even if Android is compromised. The company adds that the approach requires no hardware modifications and is intended to work on current commercial smartphones without limiting typical use.

Soverli positions the product within broader efforts, particularly in Europe, to strengthen digital sovereignty and operational continuity, arguing that smartphones remain a gap because secure communications and device management depend on the underlying OS. Early prototypes developed at ETH Zurich drew interest from public-sector and enterprise stakeholders as well as European manufacturers and integrators, contributing to the team spinning out as an independent company.

The initial focus is mission-critical communications, with public-sector pilots underway in emergency response and critical infrastructure contexts. The company says an isolated environment can continue operating on a separate software stack if the primary OS is disrupted, helping keep communications and core workflows running. The same approach is also being evaluated for secure communications and enterprise bring-your-own-device use cases.

With the new funding, Soverli plans to expand its engineering team, support more smartphone models, strengthen integrations with mobile device management systems, and scale partnerships with OEMs.