The DIANA challenge programme starts with a competitive call for proposals targeting three strategic focus areas: energy resilience, secure information sharing, and sensing and surveillance. Derived from defence and security needs across the Alliance, informed by the state-of-development of commercial technologies, and designed for deep tech innovators – our programme seeks your help in solving critical dual-use (civilian and defence) challenges.
Innovators who are accepted into our challenge will receive grant funding to support their technology development and demonstration, participate in a customised commercial and defence-focused accelerator programme, gain access to test and evaluation resources across the Alliance, and benefit from curated exposure to investors and end users to support technology transition and adoption.
The call for proposals for our 2023 challenges will be open until August 25.
DIANA leverages its acceleration programme and test centre network to bring start-ups together with operational end users, scientists, and systems integrators to advance compelling deep tech with dual-use solutions for the Alliance.
Companies accepted into the DIANA accelerator programme gain access to:
- grants to support technology development and demonstration, and participation in the DIANA accelerator programme.
- 10+ accelerators across the Alliance, with more planned over the coming years
- 90+ test centres (with more planned) across the Alliance where entrepreneurs can de-risk, and demonstrate and validate their proposed dual-use technological solutions
- mentoring from scientists, engineers, industry partners, end users, and government procurement experts
- an investor network for trusted third-party funding
- opportunities to demonstrate technology in operational environments
- pathways to market within the NATO enterprise and 31 Allied markets
