On January 22 the official opening ceremony of the NATO DIANA UniLab Defence acceleration site in Latvia will take place in Riga. This will also be the opening demo day for six startups from Canada, Slovenia, Norway, and the United Kingdom that have been admitted to the NATO DIANA acceleration programme and will spend the next six months developing their products in Latvia at the UniLab Defence Accelerator.
The NATO Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (NATO DIANA) is an innovation programme aimed at fostering cooperation between NATO, academia, and the private sector to accelerate the adoption of new technologies in the defence and security sector. NATO DIANA focuses on critical technologies that strengthen allied capabilities in tactically complex situations.
Latvia is taking part in the NATO DIANA acceleration programme call for the first time. This means that out of 150 startups admitted to the programme in the first half of 2026, six will be working in Latvia.
“For Latvia, this is an opportunity to attract top-level defence and military industry experts from around the world and to offer its ecosystem for the development of innovative technologies,” says Andris Baumanis, Head of UniLab Defence, describing the benefits for Latvia.
The UniLab Accelerator was jointly founded and is being developed by Riga Technical University, the University of Latvia, Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies, and Rīga Stradiņš University. Its goal is to promote the development of science-intensive entrepreneurship in Latvia. With the support of the Ministry of Defence, a new defence and dual-use technology track was established in 2025. The aim of UniLab Defence is to foster regional growth and resilience in the face of global security challenges. In 2025, UniLab Defence officially became the NATO DIANA Accelerator in Latvia.
The first week of the NATO DIANA programme, during which the six startups will work in Latvia, will take place from January 19 to 21. They will have the opportunity to demonstrate their newly developed skills and knowledge at the event on January 22, which will mark the official opening of the UniLab Defence Accelerator.
The opening ceremony will be attended by Ministry of Defence Andris Sprūds, Minister for Foreign Affairs Baiba Braže, the Ambassador of Canada to Latvia H.E. Brian Szwarc, Lieutenant Colonel Adam Poirier, Chief Engineer and Lead for Testing and Experimentation at Multinational Division North, and Andris Baumanis, Head of UniLab Defence. NATO DIANA Acceleration Programme spokesperson Heather Buisman will speak about NATO DIANA cooperation and the opportunities it offers for innovation in the defence sector. Afterwards, six startups will take the stage with five-minute presentations, following which they will be questioned by industry experts, who serve as mentors to the teams during the first training phase.
The official ceremony marking the opening of the NATO DIANA UniLab Defence Acceleration Centre in Latvia will take place as part of Defence Industry Day, organised by the Security and Defence Industries Federation in cooperation with the Ministry of Defence.
It should also be noted that for the first time since the launch of the NATO DIANA innovation programme in 2022, a Latvian startup Deep Space Energy has received support under the auspices of the programme and will continue its acceleration programme in Poland. Deep Space Energy provides resilient electricity supply in space based on scalable radioisotope systems. According to the startup’s co-founder and CEO Mihails Ščepanskis, the core principle of the technology is based on the concept that everything needed for space should be created from space resources, in order not to consume the Earth’s resources. The company’s goal is to generate electricity measured in kilowatt-hours, similar to on Earth, and to supply it to space agencies and private companies that plan to utilise the Moon’s mineral resources in the long term.
Source: labs of Latvia
