The United Kingdom and Ukraine look like they may have minted their first defence tech ‘unicorn’. Uforce (stylised ‘UFORCE’) — a London-based startup founded and run by Ukrainians that makes both land, sea and aerial systems — said that has raised $50 million in seed funding at a valuation of over $1 billion.
The funding comes on the heels of very strong business for the company, which has described its funding as coinciding with “emerging from stealth” although that’s a debatable description. The company has already deployed equipment extensively to Ukraine’s forces across multiple campaigns and is already profitable on bookings that it says are in the hundreds of millions of dollars, growing 450% in 2025.
“Ukraine didn’t just adapt to modern warfare, it reinvented it,” said Oleg Rogynskyy, its co-founder and CEO, in a statement. “We built a company that can take these combat-proven, not slide-deck-proven, systems and deliver them to the allies now facing similar threats.” We will hopefully be talking to Rogynskyy later.
The investment and valuation marks a big shift in terms of how international investors are backing and interfacing with Ukrainian startups, which have faced challenges due to export restrictions, corruption allegations in the country and other risky issues. Offsetting the risk of working only in war-torn Ukraine, Uforce has manufacturing and sources materials from 15 locations in six European allied countries. It also said it has a team of more than 1,000 engineers, developers, and operators.
This investment will let Uforce continue that work as well as expand manufacturing outside of Ukraine, too.
In particular, the company has developed counter-drone systems that are capable of blocking Shahed drones from Iran that are used extensively by Russian forces.
That work and those capabilities are especially timely at the moment, given the current active conflict with Iran stretching across the Middle East.
We had heard rumours of the funding going back months, and this confirms some of the details: Lakestar, Shield Capital, and Ballistic Ventures (an ex-Kleiner Perkins team) are all named as investing in this round. (And for the record we also understand there are other investors involved that have not been officially named, including D3, Expeditions, the Lithuanian deep tech fund Iron Wolf, and Oedipus, Charles Eberly’s fund.)
“What we are seeing in Ukraine is the future of warfare, effective, faster and less costly to develop, and with a team that is relentlessly adaptive,” said Klaus Hommels, founder and chairman, Lakestar, in a statement. “UFORCE is how capability scales to democratic partners and allies.”
Uforce came to market on the strength of a strong founding team with very deep connections into tech and defence. Rogynskyy was also the the founder of people.ai and his co-founder is the former Prime Minister of Ukraine, Oleksii Honcharuk, who is also the chairman. The former Defence Secretary of the UK, Ben Wallace, is on the board.
As with other Ukrainian defence tech companies like Frontline Robotics, Airlogix, Odd Systems and more, the startup has tapped not just into an active war scenario in Ukraine, but a very deep bench of technologists in the country.
Uforce said that its flagship MAGURA uncrewed surface vessels have both struck over 12 Russian warships and became the first “in history” to shoot down manned helicopters and fighter jets. Other technology that it has developed includes Nemesis strike drones, combat robotics, counter-UAS systems and battlefield management software.
This may be the first defence tech unicorn to come out of Ukraine, but it’s unlikely to be the last. A growing number of defence-forward VCs are seeking out investment opportunities, and a number of other Ukraine startups such as Frontline Robotics are partnering with companies across allied countries (in its case Quantum Systems), setting up operations outside of Ukraine to open the door to more investment and growth.
