Kista-based TERASi has raised €11 million in a seed round co-led by the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF) and JOIN Capital. It is NIF’s first direct investment in Sweden and a signal to the growing number of Swedish tech companies looking towards defence.
NIF is a venture capital fund supported by 24 NATO Allies, Sweden among them, and invests independently. Many research-based companies have technology relevant to defence, but the road from lab to military customer has long been unclear. TERASi shows what that road can look like, from research at KTH Royal Institute of Technology to defence partnerships and international investment.
How TERASi keeps communication open
Military radios often transmit in every direction, which can make their signals easier to locate and jam. TERASi’s pocket-sized units address this by sending data in narrow millimetre-wave beams. Set up in minutes on a tripod or a drone, they are designed to form a secure network.
“Europe’s armed forces need to be able to move decisive information securely, at speed, and in environments where infrastructure, satellites and the spectrum itself may be contested,” says James Campion, CEO and co-founder of TERASi.
Campion sees the same need beyond defence. He has described to Industrial Loop how drones carrying the units could wait on the ground as radio towers. If a fire broke out, they could lift off and act as small mobile routers.
TERASi already works with the Swedish Armed Forces, the European Space Agency and several defence companies. The new funding will help bring its technology to more of Europe’s armed forces, grow the team and develop new products.
From research lab to defence market
When the Stockholm incubator Sting first backed TERASi in 2022, it was a radio prototype and a handful of engineers fresh out of KTH. For Raoul Stubbe, Deep Tech Business Coach at Sting, the story is about seasoned scientists who dared to put their work in front of real customers. Few take that chance, and he wants more to follow.
“Both industry and academia would gain tremendously if we encourage our best brains to test these waters. Let them start companies, let them implement their ideas solving world problems. We should even grant them a return ticket,” he writes on LinkedIn.
Defence is a market where that call could land. A report by NIF and Dealroom shows venture funding for European defence, security and resilience startups rising 55 per cent to a record in 2025. It also points to startups increasingly winning public contracts and partnering with established defence companies.
For research-based companies, that means more ways in. TERASi went from radio prototype to NIF-backing in four years. Other researchers in Sweden considering the same move now have an example to follow.
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