LEVATO Selected by NATO DIANA for the Decision Superiority Challenge

Being selected as one of ten companies from across the NATO Alliance is a significant validation — not just of our technology, but of our approach to responsible AI in defence.

We are proud to announce that Levato has been selected by NATO DIANA — the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic — as one of ten companies worldwide to participate in the 2026 Decision Superiority Challenge programme. The selection, made from hundreds of applicants across all 32 NATO member nations, is the strongest external validation we have received in eight years of building VANTAGE.

The DIANA Decision Superiority Challenge seeks technologies that enable military and civilian leaders to make faster, better-informed, and more resilient decisions in increasingly contested and data-rich operational environments. The challenge focuses on enhancing situational awareness, improving command decision cycles, integrating artificial intelligence responsibly, and enabling commanders to transform large volumes of information into actionable insight — without sacrificing human judgment. That last point matters deeply to us. It is the principle at the heart of everything we build.

What VANTAGE Brings to This Challenge

Modern military operations generate enormous volumes of data. The challenge is not access to information — it is the ability to act on it faster than the adversary. VANTAGE addresses this by giving commanders a structured, repeatable environment for rapidly exploring courses of action before committing forces, resources, or doctrine.

By combining human expertise with AI-enabled decision support, VANTAGE allows organizations to experiment with alternative courses of action, assess operational risk, validate emerging concepts, and support future force design within realistic synthetic environments. The platform captures decision inputs, adjudication logic, and outcomes in structured formats — transforming wargaming from a primarily qualitative activity into a scalable, data-driven analytical capability.

“Being selected by NATO DIANA is the strongest external validation we have received in eight years of building VANTAGE. It confirms what our customers in the Norwegian Armed Forces, Ukraine, the Netherlands, and the United States have been telling us: that digital, human-centric wargaming is not a future capability — it is an operational reality, and VANTAGE is leading it.” — Stian Osmundsen, CEO & Founder, Levato AS.

What makes VANTAGE distinctive is its architecture, where AI agents can be trained inside the simulation itself, not layered on top through general-purpose language models. Every recommendation traces to physics-consistent simulation outcomes — auditable, explainable, and grounded in operational cause-effect relationships. Trust, in our approach, is built from the algorithm up.

Eight Years of NATO Delivery

This selection did not come from a laboratory. VANTAGE has been in operational use since 2017, built in close collaboration with the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy and the US Coast Guard. The platform has been deployed with customers in Ukraine, the Netherlands and on several projects in the US.

“We are honoured to join the DIANA programme — not just for what it means for Levato, but for what it represents for Nordic defence innovation. Norway has always punched above its weight in NATO. VANTAGE is a continuation of that tradition: a small team, deep operational relationships, and a genuine technological breakthrough that the Alliance is now recognizing at its highest level.” — Espen Askvik, Chairman & President, Levato AS.

What Comes Next

Between now and December 2026, Levato will integrate VANTAGE with Maven Smart Systems (MSS) NATO — NATO Allied Command Operations’ primary AI-enabled warfighting platform — in a cloud demonstration environment.

The DIANA programme reinforced something we have believed since 2017: open, interoperable, and rapidly deployable digital experimentation platforms are becoming a critical component of decision superiority. They provide a repeatable framework for experimentation, learning, and evidence-based decision-making across the full spectrum of military operations. Digital wargaming is no longer a training activity. It is an analytical capability — and increasingly, a command capability.

“NATO DIANA exists to find and accelerate the technologies that will give Allied commanders the edge they need. VANTAGE represents exactly the kind of mature, operationally validated, AI capability that this challenge was designed to surface and scale.” — Luis E. Velazquez, CTO, Levato AS — Former Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command.

We are honored to be part of the DIANA cohort and to bring VANTAGE into this next chapter alongside Allied partners, NATO stakeholders, and the broader defence innovation community.

To learn more about VANTAGE and Levato’s work, visit levato.no.