Ex-RAF Officer Nicola Sinclair launches Twin Track with £5m NATO backing

Twin Track Ventures, a London-based early-stage venture fund led by former Royal Air Force officer Nicola Sinclair, has secured £5 million in its first close, backed by the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF) and institutional investor Allocator One.

The fund, which targets startups developing dual-use technologies, those applicable to both commercial and defence sectors, plans to invest in 25 companies across NATO member states, with a focus on compute, sensors, communications, advanced manufacturing, and energy systems.

The NATO Innovation Fund, established in 2023 to accelerate emerging technologies critical to transatlantic security, has rarely disclosed individual investments, making its participation in Twin Track’s first close a notable signal of confidence in the UK’s deep-tech ecosystem.

Allocator One, a supporter of emerging fund managers, also contributed to the round, alongside several undisclosed defence-sector investors. Twin Track expects to reach its £10 million target by 2026.

Twin Track has already deployed capital into five companies: Uplift 30, SE3 Labs, Cassi, and two stealth-mode startups. Investments range up to £500,000 at pre-seed and seed stages, with a mandate to back firms that can navigate both civilian markets and complex defence procurement pathways.

Sinclair, an 18-year veteran of the British Armed Forces, founded Twin Track to address a longstanding gap in early-stage capital for dual-use startups. “I’ve been in the defence space for 20 years,” she said. “I’ve seen announcement after announcement about the increase in spending, and it doesn’t necessarily materialise in the way that the announcement would suggest.”

Her observation reflects broader frustrations within the defence innovation community.

Despite NATO members collectively committing to spend 2% of GDP on defence, a threshold more countries are now meeting following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, procurement cycles remain slow, bureaucratic, and often ill-suited to agile tech firms.

However, recent reforms, including the U.S. Department of Defense’s Replicator initiative and the UK’s Defence Technology Framework, have streamlined acquisition pathways for commercially viable technologies.

Data from PitchBook shows that global investment in defence tech reached $22 billion in 2024, up from $13 billion in 2021, with European startups capturing a growing share, particularly in the UK, France, and Estonia.

Yet early-stage funding remains scarce compared to the U.S., where the Defense Innovation Unit and private investors have fostered a more mature dual-use ecosystem.

Twin Track’s emergence could help close that gap. If successful, the fund may demonstrate that specialised, agile vehicles led by operators with domain expertise can effectively bridge commercial markets and national security needs, without relying on traditional defence primes or government grants.