The managing director of NATO’s tech accelerator Diana, Deeph Chana, has left the organisation after two years.
The announcement was quietly posted on Diana’s news page in early June. Chana helped set up the programme in 2023. He will continue working on topics like resilience and entrepreneurship within the business school of Imperial College London, where he has been a professor alongside his work at Diana.
Chana’s departure comes amid a broader shakeup within NATO’s tech-focused arms: the alliance’s venture capital fund, the €1bn NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), has now lost three of its original five partners in the last year, roughly two years after its fund launched, Sifted reported last week.
NATO Diana has yet to appoint a new managing director, but the role will be filled in the interim by Jyoti Hirani Driver, Diana’s COO and civilian deputy director, according to the announcement.
The Diana accelerator (short for the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic) is part of the organisation’s aim to boost innovation around deeptech and defence capabilities across the alliance. The accelerator has an annual budget of around €50m to run the programme, investing initial grants of €100k (with a possible additional €300k) for the six-month programme.
Back in 2023, the accelerator chose 44 startups — 30 of which were in Europe — for its inaugural batch. In total, the accelerator has helped 118 companies, according to a recent LinkedIn post by Chana.
In a statement, Chana said that it has been an “honour” to have stood up the accelerator, adding that he is “immensely proud” of the team and that Diana has “now reached a threshold of operational maturity that can allow it to enter its next phase of evolution.” He said he will “look forward to supporting its future efforts from the outside.”
In a statement provided to Sifted, Diana’s head of communications said that “after its initial start-up phase, DIANA has reached a natural transition point in the maturity of the organisation.” Dennis Gyllensporre, Diana’s chair of the board, said in a statement that the accelerator was “grateful for his [Chana’s] contributions and wish him continued success.”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/head-nato-accelerator-departure-turnover/
