Mykhailo Fedorov, the 36-year-old who was abruptly fired from his role as Ukraine’s defence secretary after just six months on the job, has parlayed his reputation for being a major supporter of new defence tech and startups into the next inevitable step. He’s officially started pulling money together for what appears to be a new defence tech business.
He has been on a visit to the US, which started with a visit to Washington to actively cast around for investors amid “meetings with venture funds, entrepreneurs, technology companies, experts and organisations that can become partners in our new projects and help strengthen Ukraine.”
There is some early momentum in evidence. On Tuesday, Fedorov announced his first anchor investor, and it’s a biggie. Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, confirmed he will back Fedorov with an undisclosed amount of money.
In a video Fedorov shared on LinkedIn to drum up interest, both Fedorov and Karp don swag with the Palantir logo on it — Fed a sweatshit; Karp a cap — but it appears that Karp is investing in a personal capacity.
A lot of details — such as the name of his venture, what partnerships might take shape, and actually much of any specifics around what he’s cooking up — are yet to be revealed.
Fedorov says he will be outlining more on that later. There is the prospect of a defence tech fund, but there is also an opportunity to create a private equity-style holding company that works on merging and building out ideas that are already being hatched, not unlike what Uforce has been doing.
Karp is not the only person who has taken a meeting with Fedorov. He’s spent the last several days in the US talking to other investors, too. We know this because, as a young millennial with experience in marketing, Fedorov understands that showing can sometimes be even more important than doing, so he’s been boosting those chats with posts on social media.
A separate note on Telegram featured two other investors and their firms: Nate Fick, a director of equity investment strategy at Cerberus Capital Management; and Guy Filippelli, founder and managing partner of Squadra Ventures.
They talked Ukraine, naturally, and Fedorov was clear to flag their experience in defence and track records in investment. Neither of them are confirmed (yet?) as participants or partners in Fedorov’s venture, but the meetings were very clearly about exactly that.
“One of the key focuses of our meetings is the creation of a new defence technology investment fund,” he noted. “We are looking for international partners to attract capital and expertise and create new companies around technologies that are critically needed on the battlefield today.”
Fedorov the entrepreneur
The sudden shift from top-level government official to financier who stands to profit handsomely from the tech being built to fight Russia may take some by surprise — not least because of how recently Fedorov was privy to restricted information in a country still very much in the middle of a brutal war.
It’s a picture that is further muddied by the fact that Fedorov has also quickly taken on a separate role as a defence tech advisor to the Italian government.
Taking a different view, it appears also that he’s leaning into the resourcefulness that has gotten Ukraine to where it is now, halting and credibly challenging a much bigger adversary. He’s still addressing the same threat that shaped his work in government; but now he is pivoting to another approach to get there. (Okay, maybe making some serious money for himself too in the process: we have yet to see how this whole business will work.)
The goal remains the name: Ukraine needs funds to fight.
There has been more than $300 billion sent to the Ukraine in the form of loans, donations and financing since the start of the war, according to estimates from the Kiel Institute, but Ukraine still needs more.
More money; more support from abroad; and more of the next generation of technology to address and surpass whatever Russia throws at the problem.
The last of these evolves constantly. Right this minute, for example, it feels like effective interceptors and long-range missiles are what are needed. (Indeed those two, plus battlefield robotics, are what Fedorov said he would concentrate on first.) Yesterday it was something else, and tomorrow perhaps something different, too.
A lot of money will continue to flow directly to Ukraine, but some of it may well come in the form of private channels formed from the pull of that tech.
Fedorov’s connections to buyers and users and to builders are in fact priceless to people who are investors and those who want to use money to help. Some are not wasting time in grabbing that opportunity to work with him.
Good investors and founders spread their bets, and that goes for Fedorov’s backers, too. Palantir is growing astronomically right now, with revenues up more than 90% in its last earnings and profits beating expectations by a wide margin.
Business in its home country of the US seems to be going swimmingly. But it is running up against some controversy in some international markets outside of the US such as the UK, where the government this week launched a fund to encourage development of homegrown (read: sovereign) AI and other tech, effectively alternatives to the likes of Palantir, which has launched a lawsuit against London and is facing other pushback in the country.
Not so in Ukraine. The company has had a productive run in the country so far, working on ground-breaking datarooms and other projects to expand how the company contracts with military and government to support the effort against Russia. Throughout that, Fedorov has been a close ally to Palantir, getting it around the table and onto the battlefield.
Now the big question will be whether, as a seller rather than a buyer, Fedorov has the same pulling power to get the table set up and the meal going.
