NATO Selects 15 Firms to Move Defense Tech Into Military Use

NATO has selected 15 companies to advance their technologies toward military adoption under the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) program.

The companies were chosen from DIANA’s 2026 cohort of 150 innovators, which itself was selected from more than 3,600 proposals submitted through a competitive challenge process. Ten of the 15 companies are joining the Mission Track this year, following the selection of the first five in May.

Mission Track focuses on helping technologies move beyond development and testing toward actual use by NATO and its member states.

Selected companies receive 300,000 euros ($348,000) in non-dilutive funding, continued access to NATO test centers, and support aimed at connecting their systems with military and industry users.

The 15 companies come from 10 NATO countries and cover areas including cybersecurity, biotechnology, communications, uncrewed systems, space, and maritime defense.

The companies are Alias Robotics, BruhnBruhn Innovation, CET, Cohesys, Deep Breathe, Fieldmade, Hefring Marine, Infrahex, JET Connectivity, Mesodyne, OledComm, SkyFi, Spacedrip, Spaceflux, and Vig Sec Drone.

“NATO DIANA’s Mission Track bridges the gap between breakthrough technologies and real-world impact,” Acting Managing Director Jyoti Hirani-Driver said.

NATO Builds Defense Technology Pipeline

The Mission Track selection is part of a broader NATO effort to use competitive challenges to identify technologies that could fill capability gaps and eventually move into procurement.

In July, NATO also used a competitive challenge to select 10 companies working on decision-superiority technologies. Their systems are being integrated into a cloud environment linked to real-world military use cases, including NATO’s Maven Smart System, with each company receiving 100,000 euros ($116,000) to support integration and demonstration.

NATO has also expanded the competition pipeline for its next cohort. In June, DIANA launched six new challenges covering areas such as human survivability, multidomain autonomy, and advanced sensing and data processing, with selected innovators set to join the 2027 program.

Source: Defence Post