NATO Innovation Fund

The NATO Innovation Fund participated in Fractile's $220m Series B on 20 May 2026, alongside In-Q-Tel (the CIA's venture Arm) and Oxford Science Enterprises, with no UK sovereign vehicle present . Its presence on a UK chip startup's cap table at Series B, a stage at which NATO-IF normally backs earlier-stage dual-use companies, signals that Fractile's SRAM in-memory compute architecture is being assessed as a near-term allied-defence procurement target rather than speculative research.

The NATO Innovation Fund is a €1bn multi-sovereign venture capital fund established in 2022 by 24 NATO member states, making it the first multi-government venture fund in NATO's history. It invests in dual-use technology startups across deep tech, energy, space, and advanced manufacturing, with a mandate to accelerate technologies relevant to allied defence and security. The fund operates commercially, seeking market-rate returns alongside its strategic mandate, which distinguishes it from grant-based defence innovation programmes. Portfolio companies gain no automatic NATO procurement rights, but participation signals allied-government interest in a technology's direction.

NATO-IF's Fractile investment is structurally significant in the context of UK innovation policy. The fund invested in a British chip startup's largest-ever round without any UK state vehicle (neither the SAIU nor the BBB) joining the cap table, three weeks before the UK Government's AI Hardware Plan was due to name UK chip companies as first customers . For UK policymakers, the pattern raises the question of whether allied national-security capital is establishing governance and technology-access positions in UK strategic assets before UK state instruments have deployed.