Each year, NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic — DIANA — opens a challenge call around specific defence and security problems. Companies from across the Alliance apply in their thousands. But only a small number get through.
For most deep-tech companies, the path into defence is long. Procurement cycles stretch across years. Trust is built slowly. The right conversations, with the people who actually understand what a technology can do and have the authority to act on it, can take years to reach, if they’re reachable at all.
DIANA is designed to shorten that path. Companies that make it into the programme receive €100,000 in funding and access to over 200 test centres throughout NATO. More importantly, they get structured, direct engagement with military end-users, defence primes and Ministries of Defence in all 32 member nations. And they leave with the knowledge that their technology has been assessed and found relevant by the Alliance.
Three Kista-based companies have participated in the programme and two of them share their experiences in this article.
Blixt completed the 2025 cohort, chosen from over 2,600 applicants. Exeger is mid-way through 2026, one of 15 companies selected from a pool of over 3,600 for the Energy & Power challenge. With the next call expected in summer 2026, their accounts offer a concrete picture of what getting in demands, and what it delivers in return.
Blixt: the defence electrification shift
Blixt develops Programmable Power technology — software-defined control of how electrical energy is managed and distributed across complex systems. When the company applied to DIANA, the goal was clear: to bring this approach to the attention of defence, and to build a meaningful foothold within a sector they saw as increasingly relevant.
What the programme gave them confirmed that instinct, and then went further. Participation in DIANA signalled that the technology was relevant to some of the most demanding operational environments in the world — and working inside the programme showed Blixt just how wide that relevance runs.
“Working closely with defence actors made us realise the sheer breadth of implementation areas,” says Daniel Öhlander, CCO at Blixt Tech AB. “The defence sector, much like civilian industries, is undergoing a major electrification shift.”
That shift is visible across modern military systems: electrified vehicles, the rapid proliferation of drones, distributed platforms that depend on flexible and resilient electrical infrastructure. In that context, Programmable Power becomes a strategic capability — one that shapes how energy is managed and how resilient a system can be under pressure.
Access was equally concrete. “We connected with stakeholders we simply wouldn’t have reached otherwise,” Öhlander says. “From major defence primes and Ministries of Defence to NATO’s extensive network of testing facilities — this ecosystem would have been largely inaccessible to us.”
For companies working at the intersection of deep tech and defence, that kind of access rarely comes from making the right calls. Procurement cycles are long, relationships take years to build and the gap between a promising technology and the right conversation can be just as slow to close. DIANA compresses that.
Exeger: the case for European energy sovereignty
For Exeger, the rationale for applying to DIANA was twofold. The first was the technology itself. Powerfoyle, the company’s patented solar cell technology, is already deployed at scale in consumer electronics. In defence, where equipment must operate reliably in the field without access to charging infrastructure, that capability becomes mission-critical.
“At its core, Powerfoyle reduces or eliminates dependence on charging infrastructure and external power supply,” says Giovanni Fili, CEO and founder of Exeger. “That is directly relevant in defence, where energy resilience is fundamental.”
The second dimension is origin. In a world where supply chains have become a strategic concern, the ability to develop and manufacture scalable energy solutions within Europe — with control over materials, processes, and production — is a capability in itself.
“As a Swedish deep-tech company, it is important for us to contribute to building technologies that are developed and produced within Europe, for Europe and our allies,” Fili says.
A few months into the programme, DIANA has provided access that is difficult to replicate elsewhere.
“It allows us to validate not only the technology, but how it integrates into real defence systems and operational use cases. Equally important, it connects us with partners and stakeholders across allied nations — which is essential when building solutions that need to scale within a NATO framework,” Fili says.
The ambition at the end of the programme is clear: “If we can contribute to reducing dependency on external energy solutions, while strengthening operational resilience and reducing the logistical burden in the field, then we have achieved something meaningful.”
The next call
DIANA’s next challenge call is expected in summer 2026. At the time of writing no dates have been confirmed.
Swedish deep-tech companies are increasingly well positioned to make that case. The ecosystem is strong, the technology is there and the defence context has never made civilian innovation more relevant. For companies with technology that speaks to genuine defence needs, the next few months are the time to build the argument before the window opens.
Read more about DIANA at diana.nato.int
DIANA breakfast meetup 29 April, Kista
Two Swedish DIANA participants share their experiences at a breakfast hosted by Kista Science City at Kista Science Tower. Daniel Zakrisson from Scaleout and Trued Holmquist from Blixt will speak about what the selection process involves, what the programme demands and what they have taken from it.
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