On Monday 13 January, the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA)
and its delivery partner, the JANUS Consortium, welcomed its
first NATO DIANA cohort.
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Five innovative companies have embarked on a six-month
programme consisting of ten modules custom designed for early
stage start-ups.
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The UK Accelerator hosted a launch event for over 100
attendees on Thursday 16 January to officially kick-start the
cohort.
DIANA is a ground-breaking initiative that connects defence
personnel, innovative start-ups, and industry across the Alliance
to solve critical defence and security challenges. It provides a
platform for innovators to develop, scale and test dual-use
emerging technologies that address both military requirements and
civilian applications.
The Janus Consortium, working in partnership with DASA, will
deliver a six-month hands-on programme consisting of ten modules
to the five selected defence start-ups. The programme will help
them develop, scale and test technologies to solve NATO DIANA's
specific challenges and work to enhance the productivity and
competitiveness of NATO's defence industrial base. In addition,
it will expand the range of innovative capabilities available for
acquisition and deployment by civilian, defence and security
customers in the UK and NATO-allied nations.
The 2025 Accelerator Programme will be delivered from a new, high
specification office at the Imperial College London, Innovation
Hub (I-HUB) in the White City Innovation District, which is
co-located with the NATO DIANA Headquarters.
The five innovators successfully selected from 2,400 applications
for the DIANA programme are:
AI Verse (France)
An artificial intelligence (AI) company addressing the challenges
surrounding accessibility, quality, privacy, accuracy, and
labelling of images for training computer vision models.
EIFys (Finland)
Founded by university researchers, the company aims to
commercialise induced junction black silicon photodiodes.
Metahelios (UK)
A company building imaging technologies for industries through a
nanotechnological approach.
RVmagnetics
(Slovakia)
A high-technology company in the field of sensors and
identification technologies based on microwaves.
Winse Power
(Finland)
A company developing Optical links, a solution for delivering
power and data with light, with applications in the sensing and
surveillance fields.
Launch Event
On Thursday 16 January, the launch event was held at Scale Space
located in White City, London. The agenda included a keynote from
The Rt Hon MP, Minister of State for
Defence Procurement and Industry, as well as speeches from Jyoti
Hirani-Driver, COO, NATO DIANA, Anita Friend, Head of DASA and
Tanya Suarez, founder of the Janus Consortium.
This event also hosted panel discussions with key stakeholders in
the innovation space and introduced the five innovators to
representatives across the defence and security industry,
bringing together Allies, Government and investors.
Anita Friend, Head of DASA said:
This is an exciting milestone for the UK Accelerator. Through
DASA's partnership with NATO DIANA, we're fast-tracking the
development of dual-use technologies that address critical
defence challenges. We're thrilled to welcome these five
innovative companies to the UK Accelerator programme and look
forward to supporting them in developing solutions that will
benefit both military and civilian applications across the
Alliance.
Tanya Suarez, CEO of IOT Tribe, part of the Janus Consortium
said:
In today's rapidly evolving security landscape, innovative
defence technologies have surged to the top of the government's
agenda. The UK stands as a hotbed for innovation, and through the
UK Accelerator, we look forward to channelling this momentum. Our
partnership with DASA will empower cutting-edge start-ups with
the essential tools to become investment-ready, accelerating our
future defence capabilities. Our best-in-class programme will
help to enhance our technological sovereignty, bolster the
security of the NATO allies, and ensure the UK remains at the
forefront of defence innovation to promote a safer world.
