Thales & Plug and Play Target 9+ Sectors Including Space for Startup Acceleration

For space startups, landing a defense prime as a customer is the holy grail—but long procurement cycles and classified environments often shut them out. Thales’ new partnership with Plug and Play creates a structured pipeline for promising spacetech and dual-use startups to collaborate directly with Thales’ business units, bypassing typical barriers. With a focus on aerospace and space among 9+ deep-tech sectors, the TMT Singapore hub gives startups a chance to validate their technologies in real defense and satellite operational contexts, potentially accelerating adoption by a €18.7B industry titan.

On July 15, 2026, Silicon Valley innovation powerhouse Plug and Play and French defense, aerospace, and cybersecurity giant Thales announced a strategic partnership to supercharge global expansion of deep-tech startups through Thales’ Trust My Tech (TMT) program. The collaboration, first deployed from Singapore as the APAC hub, will leverage Plug and Play’s Innovation Framework – a systematic methodology combining strategic planning, organizational capabilities, and startup collaboration – to identify, validate, and scale frontier technologies. Thales, a €18.7 billion-revenue group with deep roots in sensitive defense, aerospace, and digital identity markets, is betting that open innovation will accelerate its access to breakthroughs in AI, cybersecurity, communications, digital identity, spacetech, sustainability, fintech, regulatory technology, and quantum computing. By opening its business units and domain experts to selected startups for proof-of-concept (POC) projects, pilot initiatives, and potential commercial partnerships, Thales aims to shorten the time from lab to market while providing startups with invaluable real-world validation and a pathway to global deployment.

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Thales’ new partnership with Plug and Play creates a structured pipeline for promising spacetech and dual-use startups to collaborate directly with Thales’ business units, bypassing typical barriers.

The partnership represents a maturation of corporate-startup engagement in the deep-tech realm. Traditional venture-client models have struggled to bridge the gap between cutting-edge research and defense-grade requirements – long procurement cycles, high certification barriers, and security sensitivities. Plug and Play, with over 500 corporate partners and a global network of accelerators, brings a proven playbook for structured startup scouting and engagement. Thales, through its TMT program, offers what few accelerators can: direct technical collaboration with some of the most demanding end-users in aerospace, defense, and national security. For startups, this is not merely a mentoring showcase but a door to tangible revenue via commercial projects with a multinational that spent nearly €4 billion on R&D in 2025.

The selection of Singapore as the inaugural implementation hub is strategic. APAC’s deep-tech startup ecosystem has grown rapidly, fueled by government investments in AI, space, and quantum technologies, yet lacks seamless integration with European and global defense primes. Singapore itself is a rising hub for space and autonomous systems startups, and its regulatory environment is favorable for cross-border technology transfer. By anchoring TMT’s first Plug and Play–enhanced hub there, Thales signals its intent to tap Asian innovation clusters while providing a gateway for exporting European technologies. This could accelerate dual-use technology flows between the two continents, though careful export-control compliance will be essential given Thales’ defense portfolio.