Source | Helicoid Industries
Helicoid Industries Inc. (Indio, Calif., U.S.), a company known for its bio-inspired composite technologies, is one of many partners forming the 2026 NATO DIANA Accelerator cohort in the Energy & Power challenge, delivering its material technologies to the alliance to enable resilient energy and power storage systems.
DIANA (London, U.K.) is leveraging a network of more than 20 affiliated accelerator sites and over 180 test centers to advance emerging and disruptive technologies. Among other areas, DIANA will focus on big data, AI, autonomy, quantum, biotechnologies and human enhancement, energy and propulsion, novel materials and advanced manufacturing and aerospace.
The organization features an Accelerator Program that is designed to equip startups with the skills and knowledge to navigate the world of deep tech, dual-use innovation. This complete list of innovators will join DIANA’s network of accelerators across the alliance to scale their technologies and advance solutions to help solve some of NATO’s key operational challenges across:
- Advanced communications technologies
- Autonomy and unmanned systems
- Contested electromagnetic environment
- Critical infrastructure and logistics
- Data-assisted decision making
- Energy and power
- Human resilience and biotechnologies
- Maritime operations
- Operations in extreme environments
- Resilient space operations.
As part of this group, Helicoid will be delivering bio-inspired composite structures for resilient multi-environment operations. The company’s material architecture — Helicoid laminates inspired by the Mantis shrimp — deliver of variety of benefits including 74% delayed catastrophic failure, 50% higher impact strength, 92% increased load-bearing capacity, 100% increase in energy dissipation and more.
“Being selected for NATO’s DIANA Accelerator is a powerful endorsement of Helicoid’s mission to use advanced composite materials to protect both people and critical infrastructure,” says Lorenzo Mencattelli, Ph.D., managing director of technology and operations at Helicoid Industries. “As the only company in this cohort with a composite material technology, we’re committed to bringing our innovation to next-generation defence systems and high-performance energy storage solutions across the Alliance.”