In the midst of an increased momentum for defense, NATO Innovation Fund renews its investment team

Two years after securing the $ 1 billion commitments from more than 20 countries, the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF) enters a new chapter, characterized by the arrival of two new partners and the departure of a group’s founding partner.

In a framework of increased military spending on NATO members, investment in dual -use technology has been soared since the initiative was announced for the first time in 2021. Once a zone without institutional investors go, defense and durability technology reached a high level of 10% of all VC funding in Europe last year, where almost all NIF supporters are located.

This explosion should have given the NIF a first move advantage, but the fund was hampered by management challenges and a series of high profile departures. Following the NATO summit in 2025 in The Hague confirmed its importance last June, NIF is now emerging with an almost completely new investment team.

While NIF initially had four partners and a management partner, it now consists of three partners and one person who is familiar with NIF said that this flat three -party structure would remain in force for the foreseen future.

Two of the partners are new tenants: Ulrich Quay and Sander Verbrugge, who will be based in Amsterdam. Quay, a German national, was recently responsible for corporate investment as Vice President of BMW, where he previously founded and led BMW I Ventures. Verbrugge, Dutch doctoral thesis at Molecular Biophysics, was previously a partner of Deep Tech VC Fund Innovation Industries, who joined the semiconductor Design and Manufacturing Company NXP. The third partner is VC Patrick Schneider-Sikorsky, who is the last other member of the original investment team.

Along with the new hires, the Fund announced the departure of the founding partner of the Kelly Chen team, who tells TechCrunch that retirement was her decision and that she would build a new business. Chris O’Connor, another team’s partner, left NIF earlier this year with similar plans.

Chen is currently on the board of directors of many newly established NIF -backed businesses but will go to the Board of Directors as soon as its NIF is completed, TechCrunch has learned from the head of communications and the responsible Marketing of Amalia Kontesi.

While some observers want the fund to have primarily developed faster, Kontesi said NIF “is on track to meet [its] Investing goals for the year. “Since its establishment, NIF has made 19 investments: Seven in chapters such as OTB Ventures and 12 in newly established businesses, including Space Forge and Tekever, which makes dual -use drones.

Adding new partners with industrial and scientific backgrounds, no matter how impressive, may not satisfy those who wish the Fund invest in Ukraine or pure defense, as opposed to double use, responding to Russia’s war economy. But NIF’s wider dissertation is to “authorize deep technology founders to face the challenges in defense, security and durability”.

In the meantime, NIF has also increased its efforts from defense. His team was largely involved in the development of NATO’s rapid adoption planwith the aim of accelerating the adoption and integration of new technological products for defense. NIF also created the Shipment Platform with strategic recruitment, including John Ridge, who was hired as a Head of Adoption in 2024 to help launch portfolio browse the military supplies.

As far as her new partners are concerned, they were again hired through a process previously described by VC Michael Jackson as Similar to “building a boy band”. They did not work on the basis of common history or chemistry, in other words. They were determined by the NIF Board of Directors and approved by LPS.

This process may be inevitable for an organization that now counts 24 countries as limited partners, but is widely believed to be one reason why the previous group does not. This time, all three partners met throughout the recruitment process and spend time together to “secure a smooth transition and place the team for long -term success,” Kontesi said.

In a statement shared exclusively with TechCrunch, NIF vice president, Professor Fiona Murray, compared the organization with a start. “We are proud of what we have accomplished, but like any effective team we learn, experiment, improve: accelerating our processes, expanding our platform support for newly established businesses, doubling the building of the ecosystem and recognizing it.

Murray expressed the pride that he had brought together a specialized team that can work effectively, creatively and quickly. “They will allow us to move even faster and decisively to drive the alliance’s technological agenda and support the best founders in all European ecosystems,” he wrote earlier in a joint statement with Nif’s chair, Klaus Hommels.

Other activities of Hommels as an investor raised questions For possible conflicts of interestBut no change seems to have been in its role during the recent NIF LP meeting in Venice. Instead of further residing for its reorganization, NIF seems to help NATO become more durable.

“In this next phase,” NIF vice president said: “You will see us redefine the DSR opportunities and highlight the construction companies that can lead the industrial scale and truly support ecosystems across Europe.”