London-based Twin Track Ventures, a new venture fund focused on dual-use technologies, has announced the successful first close of £5 million.
The fund is led by Nicola Sinclair, an 18-year veteran of the British Air Force, who is building a specialised investment platform for startups developing technologies with both commercial and defence applications.
The full fund is expected to reach £10 million by 2026. The first close is backed by institutional investors, including the NATO Innovation Fund and emerging manager supporter Allocator One, alongside several undisclosed VC firms and individual investors from the defence and security sectors.
Invested in 5 companies
The fund will prioritise technologies across compute, communications, sensors, supply chain, manufacturing, materials, and energy. It will invest in 25 early-stage companies across NATO countries, writing cheques of up to £500k at pre-seed and seed stages.
“I’ve been in the defence space for 20 years, 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,” Sinclair says.
Moreover, Sinclair plans to keep Twin Track Ventures structured as a solo GP fund, joining a growing number of single-partner managers across Europe and becoming one of the few women leading a fund in the defence and dual-use space.
The VC has already invested in five companies, including Uplift 360, SE3 Labs, Cassi, and two startups in stealth mode.
“There’s been some major structural changes around how defence [customers] can contract that have made the sector much more interesting than it was three years ago,” she says.
“Defence procurement is hard, early traction with customers in deeptech is hard. When you put the two sectors together, the problems are appearing in different parts of the company’s life cycle, and so there’s an opportunity to offset,” adds Sinclair.
