The UK Accelerator programme has selected its cohort of five innovative start-ups in the UK to embark on a programme delivered by the JANUS Consortium to develop defence technologies.

Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) is an initiative that connects defence professionals, innovative start-ups, and industry across the Alliance to collaborate on security and defence innovation. DIANA provides a platform for cutting-edge innovation in the developing, scaling, and testing of the newest defence technologies that address both military requirements and civilian applications.

The Janus Consortium, in partnership with the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), will deliver a six-month programme of ten modules to five selected pioneering start-ups in the defence scheme. The programme is set to help these start-ups develop, scale and test technologies that solve NATO DIANA’s specific challenges, as well as expanding the innovative technological capabilities that are available for civilian, defence, and security customers across NATO-allied markets.

The five winning innovators have been selected from a pool of 2.400 applications, and include the French AI Verse, an AI company addressing challenges surrounding accessibility, quality, privacy, accuracy, and labelling of images for training computer vision models, and the British Metahelios company, who are building imaging nanotechnologies for industries.

The launch event was held on Thursday 16th January, and included a speech from The Rt Hon Maria Eagle MP, minister for state for defence procurement and industry, as well as speeches from DASA, NATO DIANA, and Janus Consortium.

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 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.”