Among the increased defense pace, the NATO Innovation Fund refreshes its investment team

Two years after securing $ 1 billion of liabilities from over 20 countries, NATO Innovation Fund (NIF) enters a latest chapter, marked by the arrival of two latest partners and the departure of the penultimate partner of the team -team.

In the context of increased military expenditure among NATO members, investments in double application technology have increased rapidly since the initiative was announced in 2021. Once a dense zone for institutional investors, defense and immunity technology has recently reached the highest level of 10% of all VC financing in Europe, where just about all NIF supporters are positioned.

This developing interest should give Nif an advantage of the first deck, but the fund was difficult by the challenges related to the management and a series of loud departures. After the NATO 2025 summit in Hague, he confirmed its importance in June last yr, NIF now appears with an almost completely latest investment team. It consists of three partners.

While NIF originally had 4 partners and one managing partner, a person familiar with the NIF said that this apartment, three -partner, could be a structure in the foreseeable future, which suggests that no latest employees will be expected. These two meetings were earlier rumorsBut the identity of latest partners has not been confirmed.

Two partners are latest employment: Ulrich Quay and Sander Verbrugge, who will live in Amsterdam. Quay, a German citizen, was recently responsible for corporate investments as the Vice President of BMW, where he previously founded and managed the corporate Venture Fund BMW and Ventures. Verbrugge, a Dutch doctorate from Molecular Biophysics, was previously a partner at Deep Tech VC Fund Innovation Industries, to which he joined after work at the NXP design and production company. The third partner is London VC Patrick Schneider-Sikorsky, currently the last remaining member of the original investment team. In addition to latest employees, the fund announced the departure of the partner of the founder Kelly Chen, who confirmed Techcrunch that it was its decision and that she would depart to build a latest undertaking. Chris O’Connor, one other founder’s partner, left with similar plans at the starting of this yr.

Chen is currently sitting on the board of several startups supported by the NIF, but will transfer his duties of the board when its employment in NIF ends, TechCrunch learned from her primary communication and marketing officer, Amalia Kontei.

While some observers regret that the fund has arrange capital faster, she said that NIF “is on the right track [its] Investing goals for a year. “Since the creation of the NIF, he has made 19 investments: seven in funds, equivalent to OTB Ventures and 12 in startups, including Space Forge and Tekever, which creates double use drones.

Despite this, adding latest partners with industrial and scientific origin, irrespective of how impressive it might not satisfy those that want the fund to take a position in Ukraine or pure defense, unlike double use, in response to the Russian war economy. But it is also in line with the wider thesis of the NIF to “enable the founders of deep technologies to solve challenges in the field of defense, security and immunity.”

However, NIF also increased his efforts on the defense side. His team was heavily involved in development NATO fast adoption planaimed at accelerating the party and integration of latest technological products for defense. NIF also builds its group of mission platform with strategic employment, including John Ridge, who was employed as an adoption director in 2024 to assist startups of the portfolio in navigation in military orders.

As for their latest partners, they were again employed in the process described by VC Michael Jackson as Similar to “building a boys’ team” – identified by the Council of Directors of the NIF and approved by LPS, as an alternative of joining forces based on a common history or chemistry.

This could also be inevitable for an organization that currently has 24 countries as limited partners, but was often indicated as one of the the reason why the previous team didn’t gel. This time, all three partners could meet throughout the recruitment process and have been spending time from that point to “ensure a smooth transition and position the team to long -term success,” Kontei said.

In a statement shared only from TechCrunch, Vice -President of the NIF, Professor Fiona Murray, he compared the organization to the startup. “We are proud of what we have achieved, but like every effective team we learn, experiment, improves: acceleration of our processes, expanding the support of the startup platform, doubling the ecosystem building and more broadly recognizing the need to build a sector and a capital stack.”

Murray expressed pride of the congregation of a qualified team that may effectively cooperate, creatively and quickly. “They will enable us to move even faster and definitely move to conduct the technology program of the Alliance and support the best founders in European ecosystems,” she wrote earlier in a joint statement with the chairman of NIF, Klaus Hommels.

Hommels’ other actions as an investor arose questions about possible conflicts of interestBut evidently no changes were made in his role during the last meeting of LP NIF in Venice. Instead of further considering reorganization, NIF seems to assist NATO change into more resistant. “In the next phase,” said the Vice -President of the NIF, “” You will see how we are re -focused on DSR’s capabilities and emphasize construction corporations that may manage an industrial scale and really support ecosystems throughout Europe. “