NATO leaders resolved to establish the Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) at the 2021 Brussels Summit. The program is designed to foster transatlantic collaboration in critical technologies, improve interoperability, and capitalize on civilian innovations by collaborating with academia and the private sector. Established in 2022, DIANA directly collaborates with leading researchers and entrepreneurs, from early-stage startups to more mature companies, to address critical defense and security challenges through dual-use technologies.
DIANA operates by managing competitive industry challenges. Each challenge is based on a critical defense and security issue, and it calls on innovators to develop deep dual-use technologies to help solve it. Innovators selected to participate in DIANA’s programs receive non-dilutive grants (investment capital that does not require them to give up equity or ownership rights in their company) and gain access to over 20 accelerator sites and more than 180 test centers across dozens of countries throughout the Alliance. They also have access to a network of mentors (scientists, engineers, industry experts, end users, and procurement experts) and a community of trusted investors. Finally, DIANA offers pathways to market both within NATO as an organization and with NATO allies.
DIANA launched its first three pilot test programs in 2023, selecting 44 companies (from a pool of over 1,300 applicants) to join its acceleration program and tackle specific challenges in energy resilience, underwater sensing and surveillance, and secure information sharing. DIANA will be able to collaborate with hundreds of innovators annually across a wide network of accelerator sites and test facilities throughout the Alliance once it is fully operational in 2025.
NATO Innovation Fund
At the 2021 Brussels Summit, NATO leaders also agreed to establish the NATO Innovation Fund. This €1 billion venture capital fund provides strategic investments in startups developing new and breakthrough dual-use technologies in areas critical to allied security.
Many startups working on deep technologies face difficulties in securing sufficient investments due to the long time-to-market and the high capital intensity of their research. The NATO Innovation Fund addresses this issue by taking advantage of its unique position as a patient investor with a 15-year operational term, which is better suited to the extended time horizons required by deep tech startups. It focuses on early-stage investments (from pre-seed through Series A and beyond), providing venture capital directly to these startups, and also has the capacity to invest in other leading deep tech venture capital funds that align with the Fund’s three strategic goals:
- Seeking cutting-edge technological solutions that address the defense and security challenges of the Alliance;
- strengthening deep tech innovation ecosystems across the Alliance;
- supporting the commercial success of its portfolio of deep tech startups.
The NATO Innovation Fund is the world’s first multi-sovereign venture fund. It includes 24 NATO allies as limited partners: Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The Fund makes direct investments in startups located in any of the 24 participating allied countries, as well as indirect investments in deep tech funds with transatlantic impact.
The Fund’s headquarters are located in Amsterdam, with regional offices in London and Warsaw.
