The Alliance is learning to innovate at the pace of the private sector. Two new tools — the DIANA agency and the NATO Innovation Fund — aim to speed the path of breakthrough technologies to operators in member states. A conversation with Adrian Dan (DIANA) and Kelly Chan (NATO Innovation Fund) showed how this ecosystem works.
DIANA versus the NATO Innovation Fund: who does what
DIANA is a NATO agency that provides non-dilutive grants and runs a two-phase accelerator program. Upon entry, it provides 100 thousand euros and, after advancing to the second phase, a further 300 thousand euros; the goal is to prepare startups so they are attractive to investors and can sell to both the civilian and government sectors. The first series of calls — secure information exchange, energy resilience, and sensing and tracking — drew 1 300 applications, of which 1 200 were unique companies.
The NATO Innovation Fund is an independent private venture capital fund with a volume of 1 billion euros. It invests in defense and security as well as in so-called deep tech, meaning hard science and engineering, and focuses on early stages, once there is at least a minimum viable product. The five-person founding team brings decades of experience investing in deep tech, with the key being that companies can stand on their own — whether they target commercial customers or governments.
How to get involved and what we’re looking for
Founders should first determine whether entering the defense and security sector is commercially sustainable. “Security” is understood broadly here: from cyber through energy transition to biotechnology and food security. The NATO Innovation Fund team can work with early-stage technologies to find suitable applications and markets, while DIANA teaches startups how to do business in this environment.
On the technology side, software, hardware, and their combinations are all in play; what matters is near-term adoptability and a meaningful connection to the published call. Both DIANA and the fund emphasize commercial viability and work with individual companies, not international consortia. Alongside the most mature markets, they also aim to build less-developed ecosystems in the fund’s 24 investor countries, among them Slovakia. The fund’s private nature enables fast, expert decisions, but the goal remains shared: to get cutting-edge technologies to users in the alliance’s member states.
