In-Q-Tel Joins NATO’s First Swedish Defence Tech Round

The NATO Innovation Fund co-led an €11 million seed round in Stockholm millimetre-wave radio maker TERASi on September 22, 2026, its first cheque in Sweden. JOIN Capital co-led the round. New money came from In-Q-Tel and from D3, a Kyiv defence-tech fund.

TERASi, a 2020 spinout from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, builds pocket radios that send high-frequency beams without fibre or towers. The fund says Europe has lacked an end-to-end maker of that kit for contested ground.

NATO’s First Swedish Cheque Buys a Pocket Radio

The NATO Innovation Fund framed the deal as its first direct investment in Sweden, and as one of the largest defence-tech rounds the country has seen. It also said the cheque was a first Swedish bet for In-Q-Tel and for D3.

Sander Verbrugge, a partner at the fund, tied the money to a gap in Allied doctrine. Modern units, he said, must move large volumes of data while satellites are jammed, GPS is spoofed, and fixed links are gone.

There’s simply no other technology in Europe, across defence and civilian markets, combining that resilience, speed and efficiency in one deployable system. This is why we’re proud to back TERASi as the NATO Innovation Fund’s first direct investment in Sweden.

Sander Verbrugge, Partner, NATO Innovation Fund

The product in that pitch is the RU1, a millimetre-wave backhaul radio TERASi unveiled in August 2025. The company said AirCore, its packaging method, made the unit up to 40 times smaller and up to 100 times lighter than nearest-in-class gear. James Campion, chief executive and co-founder, called it the GoPro of backhaul radios.

THE RU1 CLAIMS

• Form: Pocket-sized millimetre-wave radio, deployable in minutes on tripods or drones, designed and made in Stockholm.
• Speed: The NATO Innovation Fund says the links run up to 50 times faster than satellites; TERASi put the RU1 at up to 10 Gbps in 2025.
• Reach: The fund says the wireless links cover distances over 100 km.
• Method: Highly directional millimetre-wave beams that the fund says conventional detection and jamming kit does not see.

Those figures are the company’s and the fund’s, not an independent range trial published with the round. They are still the reason the cheque exists. Autonomous systems and digitised command need fat pipes, and those pipes have to stand up when the usual ones do not.

In-Q-Tel and a Kyiv Fund Take New Seats

JOIN Capital, the European early-stage firm that co-led, is the commercial face of the round. The NATO Innovation Fund already backed JOIN Capital as a fund in 2024. The names that change the story sit beside them.

In-Q-Tel was set up in 1999 by the CIA as an independent, not-for-profit investor. It says it is not a government body and not part of the CIA. It takes small equity stakes, often as a board observer, and runs technology development deals typically between $500,000 and $3 million. Equity-only cheques, it says, usually sit between $250,000 and $500,000. The TERASi ticket was not disclosed.

The firm now works with more than a dozen US government partners, plus UK and Australian intelligence services, and keeps a Munich office. Its public job is to move private technology toward American (and allied) security users. A seat on a Swedish radio company that sells European freedom of manoeuvre is consistent with that job, even if it sits awkwardly next to Campion’s line about communicating on Europe’s own terms.

D3 is the other new name. The NATO Innovation Fund called it a Ukrainian VC. PitchBook and Tracxn list a Kyiv firm founded in 2023 that backs early defence-tech companies in Ukraine and NATO countries. A fund that lives with electronic warfare in Ukraine has an obvious interest in a radio that claims it cannot be jammed in the usual bands.

WHO PUT MONEY IN

Hardtech roundups on September 22 and 23 already flattened the syndicate. One US brief listed In-Q-Tel as a co-lead. It is not. The co-leads are the NATO fund and JOIN Capital. In-Q-Tel’s value, on its own description, is less the size of the cheque than the door it opens to US security buyers.

The Swedish Armed Forces Already Picked the Hardware

The round is not a cold start. The NATO Innovation Fund said TERASi already works with leading defence primes, the Swedish Armed Forces, the European Space Agency, and European telecoms groups.

In November 2025, the Swedish Armed Forces selected the company for a Tactical 2.0 effort to build an airborne connectivity hub, with the RU1 as the wireless backbone. TERASi had also won an ESA tender on July 22, 2025, to lead compact active planar antennas for W-band satellite links, using AirCore in the 70-90 GHz range.

Campion used the funding note to talk past the radio, toward a political claim.

Europe’s armed forces need to be able to move decisive information securely, at speed, and in environments where infrastructure, satellites and the spectrum itself may be contested. That is about more than connectivity. It is about restoring Europe’s freedom to operate and communicate on its own terms.

James Campion, CEO and Co-founder, TERASi

He added that the same need runs into critical infrastructure and remote industry, where hybrid attacks hit the systems societies depend on. The dual-use line is how a seed-stage hardware shop keeps civilian volume next to a defence first customer.

Millimetre Waves Leave Little to Intercept

Most military and commercial radios in common bands are omnidirectional. They spray energy, which makes them easier to find and easier to jam. TERASi’s pitch is a narrow millimetre-wave beam, closer to a lamp you point than a bulb you hang.

The company’s defence page sells that as connectivity for the tactical edge: full-duplex links, no towers, no fibre runs. It lists mobile command and control, unmanned systems, and vehicle-to-vehicle or ground-to-air paths as the jobs. Because the beam is tight, the ground footprint stays small. Older coverage of the RU1 put that footprint under 3 km, against the wide cells of a satellite service.

The comparison the company wants is Starlink. Civilian low-earth-orbit links have carried a large share of Ukrainian battlefield traffic, and they can be jammed, spoofed, or gated by the operator. A radio you own, sit on a tripod, and pack out again is a different dependency. It is also a line-of-sight machine. Rain, foliage, and terrain still apply. Millimetre-wave does not magic away physics; it trades coverage for a beam that is harder to sit in.

TERASi says it is the only European manufacturer that can deliver a flexible wireless system for contested environments without giving up security, deployability, or high-speed capacity. The NATO Innovation Fund repeated that claim. Neither published a competitor matrix with the round.

A 2020 KTH Spinout Hits Seed Scale

Campion’s work started in academic research at KTH. He founded TERASi in 2020 with Adrian Gomez, now chief technology officer, and Bernhard Beuerle, now chief operating officer. Design, manufacture, and test still sit in Stockholm.

On August 15, 2023, the company said it had raised 13 million kronor in a pre-seed round to build system-in-package hardware for frequencies above 60 GHz, with a path toward 200 GHz. Returning names in the 2026 round, including KTH Ventures, Navigare Ventures, and Almi Invest, sit on that earlier layer.

Sweden joined the NATO Innovation Fund as a limited partner on April 18, 2024, after accession to the Alliance, becoming the 24th nation behind a vehicle that deploys backed by 24 NATO allies more than €1 billion in deep tech. The TERASi cheque arrives 2 years 5 months later. The fund had already seen the company. In February 2025, TERASi showed RF modules for moving platforms, including drones, when the fund visited Kista Science City.

FROM LAB TO SEED CHEQUE

1. 2020: TERASi is founded in Stockholm on KTH research into high-frequency wireless packaging.
2. August 15, 2023: The company announces a 13 million kronor pre-seed round for system-in-package hardware above 60 GHz.
3. April 18, 2024: Sweden becomes a limited partner in the NATO Innovation Fund.
4. March 26, 2025: TERASi says wafer-scale AirCore packaging is ready, including D-band antenna work with Tokyo Institute of Technology.
5. July 22, 2025: ESA selects TERASi to lead compact W-band satellite antennas.
6. August 21, 2025: The company unveils the RU1 millimetre-wave radio.
7. November 2025: The Swedish Armed Forces select TERASi for a Tactical 2.0 airborne connectivity hub.
8. September 22, 2026: The NATO Innovation Fund and JOIN Capital co-lead the €11 million seed round.

Initial NATO Innovation Fund tickets run up to €15 million, from seed through Series B. An €11 million seed sits near the top of that band, which is the point. This is not a toy cheque for a lab demo. It is sized to hire field engineers and to put hardware in front of armed forces.

What the €11 Million Is Meant to Buy

The fund listed three uses, and they are not the same job.

WHERE THE MONEY GOES

• Fielding: Scale current radios to European armed forces, including through work with defence primes.
• People: Grow the engineering and field team in Stockholm.
• Next kit: Build new millimetre-wave products into one tactical-edge system that combines communications, spatial awareness, and electronic warfare.

That third line is the tell. A radio company that adds sensing and electronic warfare is trying to own the beam, the picture, and the counter-picture. If it works, the RU1 is a foot in the door, not the whole product. If it slips, the company still has a dual-use backhaul box for disaster crews and off-grid industry, which is the hedge Campion described.

WHAT WE KNOW

• Closed terms: €11 million seed, co-led by the NATO Innovation Fund and JOIN Capital, announced September 22, 2026.
• Named users: Swedish Armed Forces, ESA, unnamed defence primes, and European telecoms groups already sit in the company’s orbit.
• Stated gap: The fund says no other European firm delivers this mix of resilience, speed, and deployable millimetre-wave hardware.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Cheques: No split of the €11 million by investor has been published, and In-Q-Tel’s typical ticket is much smaller than a seed lead.
• Orders: No unit volumes, delivery dates, or named force beyond Sweden were attached to the round.
• Proof: No independent intercept or jamming trial was released with the announcement.

The honest limit on the story is that last bullet. Directional millimetre-wave is physically harder to sit in than a wide military radio. “Unjammable and undetectable” is a fund headline, not a published test report.

Europe’s Defence Startups Raised $8.7 Billion Last Year

The TERASi round is small against the sector it just joined. Dealroom and the NATO Innovation Fund put European defence, security, and resilience startups at a record $8.7 billion in 2025, up 55% on 2024 and nearly four times the 2020 total. Late-stage money tripled to $4.7 billion. AI sat under 44% of that funding.

Early-stage funding in the same set fell 10% to $1.1 billion. A fat seed for hardware that still has to be built, tested, and issued is swimming against that early-stage ebb. The NATO Innovation Fund was created to write those cheques anyway. It invests independently, with 24 nations as limited partners, and next-generation communications is one of its stated verticals.

Sweden spent years as a deep-tech exporter that sat outside the Alliance. It is now an LP in the Alliance’s own fund, and the first Swedish company through that door is a radio meant to work when satellites and towers do not. In-Q-Tel and D3 did not need to co-lead to matter. They only needed to be in the room, because their presence is a map of the buyers who will judge whether a pocket millimetre-wave link is a lab trick or kit that gets issued.