The first cohort of NATO’s Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic includes six U.S. tech companies, a senior official of the security alliance confirmed.
Citing unpublished NATO documents it obtained, DefenseScoop reported that the six are among the 44 companies selected for the effort.
Four of the U.S. companies were selected for DIANA’s undersea sensing and surveillance challenge set while the energy resilience and secure information-sharing challenge areas each count a U.S.-based participant, the report added.
In an interview with the publication on Wednesday, Adrian Dan, NATO’s chief commercial officer for DIANA, said the project aims to build interoperability and capacity across the organization’s 32 member countries.
“DIANA is looking to complement national efforts to scale deep-tech, dual-use innovation and promote smooth adoption pathways,” Dan explained.
Since its launch in 2022, the program has established innovation hubs in 28 NATO member states, with the first two acceleration sites currently hosted in Boston and Seattle.
Dan noted that more companies are expected to participate in DIANA as NATO aims to evolve the program, likely scaling up the program’s challenge calls to 10 every year.
NATO started DIANA to work with startups, scientists and systems integrators to develop dual-use solutions by using emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.