Smartphones are the last great un-auditable black boxes in modern infrastructure. Governments, emergency services, and critical industries rely on devices where a single faulty update or hidden vulnerability can cause systemic failure.
ETH Zurich spin-off Soverli just raised $2.6 million in pre-seed funding to solve this with a radical approach: running a fully sovereign, auditable OS layer next to Android or iOS. This architecture, developed over four years of research, fundamentally changes how commercial phones can be used for high-stakes operations, eliminating the long-standing trade-off between security and usability.
The funding round was led by Founderful, with participation from the ETH Zurich Foundation and Venture Kick, validating the company’s patent-pending methodology for high-assurance systems.
Soverli’s core innovation is enabling multiple operating systems to run in complete isolation—simultaneously—on any standard commercial smartphone. This means an OEM, government, or enterprise can deploy a fully customizable, sovereign OS that runs in parallel to the standard Android experience. Users can switch between the full-featured Android environment and the secure, sovereign OS in milliseconds at the press of a button.
The implications for security are massive. Soverli demonstrated running Signal inside its bespoke sovereign OS, reducing the attack surface by 500x and isolating the application entirely from the main Android environment. Even if the primary Android OS is compromised with spyware or malware, the isolated, auditable layer remains confidential and operational.
This is a direct response to Europe’s accelerating geopolitical priority of digital sovereignty, which has driven billions in investment across cloud and AI but left mobile devices exposed. Current secure-phone solutions force users onto locked-down devices or require tedious reboots. Soverli eliminates that compromise.
“Availability is mission-critical, yet organizations still rely on operating systems they cannot control or audit,” said Ivan Puddu, CEO of Soverli. “We built a fully-auditable smartphone sovereign layer that stays operational even when Android is compromised.”
Why first responders need a dual OS
Soverli’s initial market focus is mission-critical communication, where business continuity is non-negotiable. Public sector pilots are already underway with organizations responsible for emergency response and critical infrastructure.
If a large-scale software update outage—like the global CrowdStrike failure—takes the main Android stack offline, Soverli’s isolated environment keeps running on its own dedicated software stack. This ensures essential workflows and communication remain operational for police officers, firefighters, and EMTs.
The same architecture is being explored by enterprises for secure bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programs. It allows employees to maintain a private environment alongside a tightly controlled, isolated business workspace. This achieves stronger data protection for the company without requiring the privacy concessions employees typically face on today’s company-managed devices.
The technology’s relevance is underscored by the fact that secure communication tools and mobile device management (MDM) systems are only as trustworthy as the underlying OS. Soverli introduces a new model where institutions can enforce their own security posture on consumer-grade hardware, without sacrificing the modern smartphone experience.
With the new funding, Soverli plans to scale its engineering team, expand compatibility to more smartphone models, and strengthen integrations with existing MDM systems and OEM partners, aiming to set a new standard for mobile security.
