Selected companies will access funding, facilities, and support. 

NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) has chosen 15 companies to move forward to phase two of its 2025 accelerator programme, a DIANA announcement revealed on 4 September.  

NATO DIANA, which discovers and scales dual-use technology for military use, announces this selection following the release of its largest-ever challenge call in June, which called on companies to submit their solutions focused on areas covering advanced communications and contested electromagnetic environments, among other things. 

In total, 15 companies have been downselected from a cohort of 73, with EUR4.5 million available to fund their solutions. Each company will receive EUR300,000 in funding and continued access to NATO test centres, DIANA said. This funding will then be used to develop defence tech solutions across areas of cybersecurity, biotech, uncrewed systems, space, and maritime defence. 

The companies involved include Kelluu (Finland), 52 North Health (UK), Tactical Edge Systems (US), Reaction Dynamics (Canada), and several others, all developing solutions across a range of areas. 

Kelluu, for example, is developing hydrogen powered UAS’ to provide intelligence and surveillance for security and critical infrastructure, particularly useful for Arctic deployments. 

52 North Health is developing a portable sensor for acute radiation syndrome to strengthen medical resilience, allowing users to remotely triage and treatment monitor people at risk of radiation sickness. 

Across the Atlantic, Tactical Edge Systems in the US is developing autonomous technologies for remote energy generation, communications, and field operations, with the aim of “enabling operations in remote and demanding conditions”. 

Canada’s Reaction Dynamics, on the other hand, is focused on the space domain and looks to position itself as a sovereign launch services provider that can help enable cost-effective launches of small commercial and defence satellites.  

“DIANA is NATO's innovation engine: we are finding the most innovative technologies from the market; we are helping these talented innovators fine-tune their technologies and grow their businesses; and we are connecting the companies to end users so that NATO defence ministries can adopt new technologies at the speed of relevance”, James Appathurai, Managing Director of NATO DIANA, commented.  

“Phase 2 is a pivotal stage in our accelerator programme, and I congratulate these companies for making and taking this next step”, he added. 

This latest announcement represents DIANA’s third set of challenges, released in June. The two previous sets of challenges were released in June 2023 and July 2024, respectively, focusing on areas of energy resilience, sensing and surveillance, and data security, among other things.