DIANA — the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic — is a NATO body that funds and accelerates dual-use deep-tech innovators across the Alliance through competitive challenges, non-dilutive grants, and a shared network of accelerator sites and test centres.
Allied leaders agreed to launch DIANA at the 2021 NATO Summit in Brussels to deepen transatlantic cooperation on critical technologies, promote interoperability among Allied forces, and draw civilian innovation from academia and the private sector into defence. It is headquartered in London, with a North American regional office in Halifax and a regional hub in Tallinn.
DIANA operates by running competitive industry challenges, each built around a critical defence and security problem. Selected innovators develop deep-tech, dual-use technologies — commercially focused but with defence applications — and in return receive non-dilutive grants that take no equity, plus access to a network of 16 affiliated accelerator sites and more than 200 test centres across member nations.
The programme has scaled quickly: three pilot challenges in 2023, five in 2024, and ten in 2025, culminating in a 2026 cohort of roughly 150 innovators working across ten challenges — its largest to date.