NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) helps entrepreneurs and researchers develop technologies that contribute to the safety and security of NATO’s populations.
The DIANA pilot challenge cohorts will begin a six-month intensive programme to develop their businesses into promising ventures.
The Alliance is celebrating a key milestone by selecting 44 of the most promising applicants. By bringing together universities, industry, and governments, DIANA solves strategic security and defence challenges through collaboration with start-ups and other innovators, thus cultivating a new generation of NATO innovators.
Among the five accelerator sites selected for the pilot programme are Tallinn, Estonia; Turin, Italy; Copenhagen, Denmark; Boston and Seattle in the United States, with 44 of the successful Alliance companies assigned to one of the accelerator sites.
Initially, the companies will begin the program in January 2024, which was specifically designed for dual-use start-ups at an early stage.
Three areas were the focus of DIANA’s 2023 pilot challenge call: Energy resilience, Sensing and surveillance, Secure information sharing. Three strategic 2023 target areas—energy resilience, secure information sharing, and sensing and surveillance—have further details available at here.
For the DIANA program, the following seven British businesses have been selected: SECQAI, Grayscale AI, IONATE, Goldilock Secure, AVoptics, Aquark Technologies, Anzen Technology Systems. The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) has funded three of the seven companies: Anzen Technology Systems, AVoptics and Goldilock Solutions. Additional details on DIANA are available here.
