Everyone loves a good competition, and NATO DIANA just dropped its latest leaderboard. On Thursday, the alliance’s defense tech accelerator announced the 15 winners of their 2025 pitch competition. The companies span ten countries and a range of sectors, and NATO’s betting that they’re just what the alliance needs to accelerate into the future.
From Brussels to boot camp: DIANA launched at NATO’s 2021 Brussels Summit and opened its first accelerator sites and test centers a year later. Each year, the program runs “challenge calls” where dual-use startups compete for funding, contracts, and, most importantly, eternal glory.
Here’s how the Accelerator program works:
- Phase One: Called “Boot-camp,” the first stage gives selected startups €100K in non-dilutive funding and a shot at evolving or adapting their tech for NATO’s defense priorities, in line with their respective pitches.
- Phase Two: Top performers move to Phase Two, called “Scale,” and receive a €300k grant and six months to demonstrate tech, develop transition strategies, and engage investors and end users to target pathways to adoption.
2025 cohort: Out of over 2,600 proposals, only 73 companies made the cut for Phase One. Out of that, only 15 advanced, with focus areas spanning energy, surveillance, cybersecurity, health, and critical infrastructure.
The roster includes Kelluu (Finland), DeltaOrbit (Germany), Zelim (UK), IS Wireless (Poland), Wayren (Estonia), 52 North Health (UK), RVmagnetics (Slovakia), Tactical Edge Systems (US), MANITTY (France), Reaction Dynamics (Canada), Telearmy (Estonia), Swaza (US), Alea Quantum (Denmark), TACTIQL (Canada), and Kinnami Software (US).
Tectonic spoke with a few of them, and they all had different takes on the competition.
Proving ground: For Finland’s Kelluu, the draw is getting in front of users—and getting airborne fast. The company’s hydrogen-powered airships create digital twins of terrain and could help NATO persistently monitor long borders and remote regions.
“Manning the 1,300-kilometer border [with Russia] and the Arctic regions would be very expensive for continuous persistence. We’ve had sabotage here in Finland, and we need to respond to the persistent hybrid threats that are likely to increase.” Kelluu CEO Janne Hietala told Tectonic. “DIANA provides a contracting vehicle that shortens the procurement cycle from three to five years down to six to 12 months.”
“There’s acceleration, test centers, exercises, access to end users, and everything else, but the rapid adoption service is most important for us, since we are now able to deploy to allied countries within NATO fast,” he added.
Diving into defense: UK-based startup Zelim, which started in maritime safety, makes camera-based software that detects everything from people falling overboard to stealthy UUVs. DIANA helped them pitch defense cases directly to the right audiences.
“Working with DIANA has given us great insight into defense use cases. We’ve had the platform to pitch the technology to the right people,” CEO Sam Mayall said. “What really helped us into the next phase of DIANA was the market adoption and the interest from the market and end customers. We’ve been asked to join a couple of high-profile NATO exercises.”
DIANA dollars: For Germany’s DeltaOrbit, which is making propulsion systems for in-space mobility, the €300k grant and opportunity to engage government and private investors will help them further develop their technology before it’s ready for takeoff.
“What we proposed during our phase two application was to build the infrastructure that is necessary to certify our equipment, be able to send it to space, and generate the confidence required for customers to use the equipment on a multi-million or billion dollar satellite systems,” DeltaOrbit CEO and CTO Dr. Christian Bauer said.
“We have a really cutting-edge technology that nobody else in the world can currently offer, but also we could clearly formulate a use case that’s relevant for DIANA and NATO in general,” Bauer added. “We’re still in development, and that takes many years in space. The pathway to adaptation was not the deciding factor for us. It’s more about getting to the decision-makers to shape the space policy of the future.”
Competitive spirit: Regardless of their proposals and goals for the next step in the Accelerator program, the DIANA decision-makers are betting that a bit of competition will draw NATO’s best and brightest into the defense tech scene.
As DIANA Managing Director James Appathurai said in a statement, “We are finding the most innovative technologies from the market..and we are connecting the companies to end users so that NATO defence ministries can adopt new technologies at the speed of relevance.”
Given the threats facing the alliance, the speed of relevance can be read as right now.