EU|BIC Krakow Technology Park spent years earning institutional standing in defence, then opened that door for its companies
NATO DIANA is the alliance’s dedicated programme for connecting deep tech startups with the defence procurement and testing environments of its 32 member countries. It operates through a network of accredited accelerator sites, each selected for its capacity to help startups develop, test and validate solutions against real defence needs.
The Krakow DIANA Accelerator is Poland’s official site, operated as a consortium of EU|BIC Krakow Technology Park and AGH University of Krakow test centres that complement it, covering robotics and autonomous systems, cybersecurity, vehicle testing and ballistic protection, geospatial analysis, supercomputing and quantum computing, and military engineering.
In defence and security, market entry works differently from any other sector. Access comes through institutional standing. A company without that standing faces a closed door, regardless of how strong its product is.
Krakow Technology Park (KPT) spent three years building that standing, beginning with a partnership with the Polish Ministry of National Defence, before applying to become a NATO DIANA site. Through that partnership, KPT launched national open innovation programmes in defence and security, learning how military procurement works, what innovation the sector needs, and how to connect startups to defence decision-makers. What KPT brought to that work was a methodology built across years of broader innovation support: structured pipelines from startup ecosystem to large corporation, end-to-end open innovation processes running from hackathons through to acceleration, and experience working with startups and industrial corporations across sectors. Poland’s first dual-use technology initiative, which bridges civilian and military applications, was the point where that accumulated capability met the specific demands of the defence domain.
The partnership with AGH University of Krakow was the next step. AGH is a shareholder in KPT and is represented on its supervisory board. That structural relationship gives KPT access to AGH’s full research depth: 100 years of technical expertise, the largest supercomputing infrastructure in Poland, and specialist capability across nine of the ten Emerging and Disruptive Technology categories that NATO has identified as priorities for allied defence. The consortium of KPT and AGH applied together to become Poland’s NATO DIANA accelerator site.
KPT also contributes to EUDIS, the European Commission’s defence innovation initiative, giving it a position at the intersection of NATO and EU defence ecosystems. That dual connection matters for companies whose customers span both frameworks.
Poland sits on NATO’s eastern flank. Defence is not an abstract policy priority in Krakow. It is an immediate operational concern, which gives KPT credibility with defence ministries and procurement agencies that a similar programme in a less exposed country would take years to build. The defence technology sector grew more than ten times between 2020 and 2025, the fastest growth of any technology sector in that period (Dealroom, 2025). KPT did not arrive at this moment unprepared. For EU|BICs in regions where defence and security are strategic priorities, the Krakow model shows how a certified incubator can do what no individual startup can do alone: earn its way into one of the world’s most demanding and most international procurement environments and then open the door for the companies it supports.
2026-Impact-Report
Share this post
