Ukrainian weapons startups are finally seeing an inflow of funds from Western investors who have long been intrigued by the Ukraine’s defense tech sector but have so far kept their money out of the war-torn country.
Financial analysis firm Pitchbook provided the Kyiv Independent with data showing a four-fold rise in foreign venture capital deals in Ukraine-headquartered startups after the market flatlined in 2022 and 2023 following Russia’s invasion.
The total dollar value remains slim — just under $20 million by Pitchfork’s accounting, and $40 million according to the Ukrainian government. But with most of these new deals coming in at the end of 2024, a dam may be bursting.
That’s entirely clear, at those levels. Absent some kind of chaos theory hypothesis, you’d need billions of dollars in motion to motivate that kind of action.