The WarTech Pipeline
Three tiers carry an idea from a researcher's bench to a fielded, revenue-generating supplier.
The Tiers in Detail
Defence Innovation & Entrepreneurship Workshop
One day
The public front door to the pipeline
Who's in it
Innovators, researchers, veterans, and aspiring founders curious about building a defence company.
CDSI provides
- An introduction to defence entrepreneurship
- How DND and allied buyers define and fund needs
- A route into the Discovery application
Leads to
Qualified candidates are invited to apply to Discovery.
Tier 1: Discovery
6 weeks
From idea to venture-ready (pre-company)
Who's in it
Researchers, veterans, and aspiring founders with a technology, insight, or DND/DRDC-aligned problem, but no company yet.
CDSI provides
- DND/DRDC problem-statement matching
- Idea and market validation
- Mentor introductions
Advances when
A defined venture concept, a founding team, and a problem worth building a company around.
Tier 2: Ignition
4 to 6 months
From concept to first customer (cohort & incubation)
Who's in it
Pre-revenue teams admitted to a structured cohort, building toward their first paying customer.
CDSI provides
- Business model and IP strategy curriculum
- Controlled Goods and security onboarding
- Funding navigation (IDEaS, IRAP, RDII)
- Defence Investment Agency introductions †
Advances when
A first customer or signed LOI, Controlled Goods Program registration underway, and a funded path to seed capital.
Tier 3: Scale
Ongoing
From first contract to sustained supplier (post-revenue, DND-ready)
Who's in it
Revenue-generating, security-cleared suppliers ready for government and allied procurement volume.
CDSI provides
- DSRB † and venture capital connections
- Multi-year contract and prime subcontracting support
- Export and allied-market support
- Hiring and screening cleared talent at volume
Success marker
Sustainable government or prime contracts, a scaling team, and an expanding export pipeline.
Our target: 50 defence startups with paying customers in 5 years. A company reaching Scale's entry bar, a first paying customer, is what counts toward that number.
Running Across Every Tier
- Mentorship Network: Retired procurement officers, cleared engineers, defence founders, and export-control counsel, matched by technical domain and go-to-market stage.
- Sector focus: C4ISR, autonomous systems, AI/ML, space, maritime, Arctic and cold-weather technology, cyber, and advanced materials.
- Peer network: Cohort channels where founders share funding wins, compliance snags, and customer introductions, because going it alone is one of the biggest gaps founders cite.
† The Defence Investment Agency (DIA) and the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB) are being established. CDSI tracks both as emerging pathways and will connect founders as they come online; they are not presented as committed funding or programs available today.