Nicola Sinclair, an 18-year veteran of the British air force, has raised roughly £5m in a first close for her solo GP fund Twin Track Ventures, which focuses on dual use startups — those with military and commercial uses. Sinclair aims to raise a total of £10m in 2026.
The new fund is backed by institutional LPs including the NATO Innovation Fund and emerging manager investor Allocator One, as well as undisclosed VC firms and individual investors from the defence and security space.
Sinclair began fundraising about 18 months ago to back pre-seed and seed startups in NATO countries, including the US; the fund has made five investments so far, including into UK-based Uplift 360, which helps break down materials in an energy-efficient way.
While many VCs are chasing drone startups or air defence systems, Sinclair is adamant about not focusing purely on defence.
Instead she’s looking for startups that can function in the market even if they don't get defence spending.
“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,” she says.
Twin Track Ventures will back 25 startups and write cheques up to £500k. Sinclair is eyeing startups in compute, communications, sensors and supply chain — including startups working on manufacturing, materials and energy.
Sinclair plans to maintain the fund’s solo GP structure for now. She’s part of a growing number of active solo GPs in the European market, but is one of a very small number of female VCs in the defence space.
Despite the increasingly competitive market for defence and dual use deals, Sinclair believes now is the best time for a bet on the industry. “There's been some major structural changes around how defence [customers] can contract that has 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,” adds Sinclair.
“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.”
