Porto-based drone-delivery company founded in 2015 and affiliated with UPTEC, the science and technology park of the University of Porto. In January 2026 it became — alongside Neuraspace — one of the first two Portuguese companies selected for NATO’s DIANA accelerator, whose test-centre network is concentrated in the Nordic-Baltic region.
Connect Robotics has spent a decade doing the unglamorous work of making drone delivery legal and repeatable. Founded in Porto in 2015 and grown out of UPTEC, the company built a drone-agnostic management platform that turns off-the-shelf aircraft into interoperable logistics assets, and has accumulated more than 15 authorised beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) operations — including approvals under the current European regulatory framework. Its commercial focus is healthcare: transporting medicines and laboratory samples where roads are slow, including delivery into disaster or conflict zones without risking human couriers.
The Nordic door opened in January 2026, when Connect Robotics and space-surveillance firm Neuraspace became the first Portuguese companies admitted to NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) — a cohort of 150 selected from thousands of applicants across the Alliance’s 32 members. DIANA membership brings grant funding and, more importantly, access to a network of test centres heavily concentrated in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and the Baltic states — exactly the geographies investing hardest in drone logistics for defence and civil resilience.
Dual-use is the fastest-growing lane in the Portugal → Nordics direction, and Connect Robotics is its logistics wing: a small Portuguese firm whose regulatory track record is precisely the credential Nordic defence and health-system buyers require. If DIANA participation converts into test campaigns at Nordic ranges, the company follows the path Tekever and Neuraspace are already tracing from Portuguese engineering to northern procurement.
January 2026: selected for the NATO DIANA accelerator alongside Neuraspace — the first two Portuguese companies in the programme, covered by NorthSouth HQ, AICEP, UPTEC and national press.
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