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Defence Builder, Kyiv (2026)

25/09/2026

Yana Shkvarovska, Director of the Defence Builder Accelerator, spent MSPO 2026 in Kielce looking at how fast the international defence industry can change what it builds.

"Agreeing at a conference that the war has changed and rebuilding your work around it are two different things," says Yana.

What she took away:
🔹When a company says it has learned from Ukraine, the useful question is what changed as a result: requirements, design, test scenarios, repair or the production plan. Several presentations highlighted open interfaces and third-party integration as a way to add capabilities without redesigning the entire platform.
🔹A product has to be producible, repairable and replaceable at scale. Buyers should check whether a company can deliver in volume, supply spare parts and support the system over time, as well as how one sample performs.
🔹Cooperation should bring Ukrainian companies funding, orders, components, production capacity and new markets. Being only a source of data or a test site does not bring any of that.

What this means in practice:
🔹Come with evidence. Combat use earns trust. Documentation, test results, consistent quality and a clear production plan turn that trust into projects.
🔹State plainly what you can do, where your limits are and what kind of cooperation you are offering. Next to the large pavilions, the Ukrainian presence looked modest, so clear presentation matters more.
🔹Use exhibitions to source as well as sell: components, prices, lead times and reliable suppliers for orders you already have.
🔹A better comms module, navigation unit, sensor or piece of software can improve a system already in service. That only works if someone owns integration, testing and support.
🔹Leave each meeting with a next step: a technical request, a sample exchange, an agreed test, a named decision-maker or funding for the next stage.

If you want to take your product from a working prototype to military procurement and investment, apply to Defence Builder Accelerator Batch 4.0.

Apply by 30 October: https://lnkd.in/duCenp_c
Programme details: https://lnkd.in/dQScvH4g

24/09/2026

Valery Krasovsky, co-founder and board member of Defence Builder and co-founder and CEO at Sigma Software Group spoke on the panel "The Public Sector and Companies on the Hybrid Warfare Chessboard" in Porto. The panel discussed how governments and industry should work when hybrid warfare is no longer a theoretical risk.

Key points from Valery's remarks:
• Ukrainian sea drones have destroyed or damaged more than 25 Russian vessels and pushed the Black Sea Fleet out of Sevastopol. That reopened an export corridor that has since carried more than 200 million tonnes.
• In the largest Shahed attacks, interceptor drones account for more than 40% of those shot down. One interceptor costs $1,000–5,000, compared with millions for an air defence missile.
• Ukraine's defence industry can produce about $55bn worth of equipment in 2026, and around 40% of that capacity is unfunded. Co-production with European partners can put it to use.
• With Portugal, three areas are ready for first projects: maritime security, critical infrastructure protection and counter-drone systems.

Ukraine brings combat-tested technology. Portugal brings industrial capacity, the REPMUS test range and access to European defence programmes. Defence Builder connects the two sides for joint R&D, testing, investment and manufacturing.

Defence Builder Accelerator Batch 4.0 is open to defence and dual-use teams from any country, including Portugal, that have a working prototype at TRL 4+. Protection from airborne threats, including counter-drone systems, is one of the seven priority areas.

Apply by 30 October: https://lnkd.in/duCenp_c
Details: https://lnkd.in/dQScvH4g

23/09/2026

🚀 Applications for Defence Builder Accelerator Batch 4.0 are open!

Our main goal is to turn your working prototype into an investable company. That means a company with validation evidence from military units, a procurement pathway, clean IP, unit economics that hold up in due diligence, and investors ready to take the meeting.

Since 2024, three cohorts have completed the programme. Our 24 portfolio companies from five countries have received $650k+ in grants.

For Batch 4.0, we're selecting 10 defence and dual-use teams from anywhere in the world with a working prototype at TRL 4+ for a four-month programme.

Apply by 30 October (20 minutes): https://bit.ly/4y9jcz5

What you get:
🪖 Military track: validation with 30+ units, field days, and demos to procurement officers and end-users
💼 Business track: 80+ experts, founders of leading tech & defence companies, and 1:1s with peers behind top products making headlines worldwide
💰 Capital: a starting grant in exchange for a minority equity stake, additional funding from our partners during the programme based on your performance, and access to a network of 100+ investors
🤖 New in Batch 4.0: AI support for R&D and operations, and executive roundtables with C-level defence leaders
🤝 After Demo Day: a personalized portfolio manager, a six-month roadmap, and introductions to manufacturers, integrators

Details: https://bit.ly/4iCu43M

Know a team that should be in Batch 4.0? Tag them in the comments 👇

21/09/2026

Defence Builder is a partner of the Resilience Media in London, and we are taking part with a delegation of Ukrainian defence tech companies.

The delegation is made up of companies from the Defence Builder ecosystem, each with external funding raised and technology already proven in operational use, across UAS and counter-UAS, EW, ground robotics, and C2 and battlefield software.

We do this deliberately and often. A company can prove its technology at the front and still have no way to reach the people who fund and buy at scale abroad — that introduction is the hardest thing for a Ukrainian team to arrange alone. Opening that access is a core part of what the ecosystem is for, for the companies and for the market they come from.

Thanks to the Resilience Media team for the partnership. They have built one of the few defence conferences where the room is actually balanced — founders and investors on one side, government and military buyers on the other. Around a third of tickets go to the military and national security communities, and the speaker list runs from senior British Army leadership to NATO's innovation directorate. For early-stage companies, that balance is the entire value of a conference.

If you are in London in early October, let us know — we will set up the meetings.

15/09/2026

Daria Yaniieva, President of Defence Builder, took part in the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC) discussion.

Her key points:
🔹US support is moving from grants to commercial diplomacy — credit structures, sovereign de-risking, corporate joint ventures. The Ukraine Reconstruction Trust Fund is one example, financed by penalties, taxes and tariffs on Russia rather than by the US taxpayer.
🔹The capital gap is larger than the capital available. Invest every fund currently open for Ukrainian defence into every open round, and the gap would still be there. One company Fund I backed early later became URIF's first investment — the question is how that kind of capital reaches a wider pool of companies.
🔹Ukraine's contribution is operational experience, not only technology — and that experience is now an input to the rearmament cycle of NATO countries.

Thanks to Irina Paliashvili and the USUBC team. The Roundtable featured Anders Aslund, Natalie Jaresko and Amb. Geoffrey Pyatt, joined by Artem Rybchenko, Deputy Minister for Recovery, Infrastructure and Transport of Ukraine.

09/09/2026

Yana Shkvarovska, Director of the Defence Builder Accelerator, spoke at the conference hosted by the AHK Ukraine - German-Ukrainian Chamber of Industry and Commerce. The panel was moderated by Tobias Köhler (Rödl & Partner). Yana was joined by Victor Chuikovsky (Rise Technologies Ukraine) and Leopold Posch (TYTAN Technologies).

Three points from her remarks:
🔹Working with the military doesn't start with a technical specification. The common assumption is that a unit hands you requirements and engineering takes it from there. The accelerator works the other way round: it starts with conversations in the units — which gaps are real on specific parts of the front, how the situation has changed since we last asked. Those conversations set the programme's priorities and the selection criteria, so a team enters acceleration with a problem already confirmed by the people who will use the product.
🔹There are around 2,000 defence-tech startups in Ukraine. This creates an opportunity not only to build something new, but to strengthen what is already in service. If a solution helps an existing drone survive enemy EW, it should be integrated into that drone, not turned into another drone next to it. Those are the R&D capabilities the accelerator is looking for.
🔹If you are not working in Ukraine, you are roughly five years behind modern warfare. Technology at the front changes in months, so partners who spend time in Ukraine — with companies, units and institutions here — plan from what is happening now rather than from last year's picture. That presence is also usually what turns an agreement into joint work.

"This is not the time to compete. It is the time to cooperate — to talk about how we strengthen what already exists, instead of competing with Ukrainian manufacturers. We have one shared task here," — Yana Shkvarovska.

08/09/2026

Andrii Hryshchuk, Investment Manager at Defence Builder Fund, spoke at the conference hosted by the AHK Ukraine - German-Ukrainian Chamber of Industry and Commerce.

The panel was moderated by Serhii Sviatenko (AHK Ukraine). Andrii was joined by Frederik Schumann (EU Defence Innovation Office) and Olena Bilousova (Defence Research Centre, KSE Institute).

Key points:
🔹Capital is not the main thing Ukrainian companies need from a European partner. Funds are coming to Ukraine and launching local vehicles; money can be raised here. The shortage is elsewhere.
🔹Scaling. Ukrainian teams mostly come from an engineering background, not a business one. Going from 100 units to 50,000 is a question of operations, production and supply. This is where a European partner closes a real gap.
🔹China-free supply chains. A Ukrainian company often cannot build one on its own. Add a strategic reserve of critical components for two to three months: a supply chain can be cut at any moment.
🔹Access to European programmes — EDIP/SAFE. Without a European partner, the path to participation and a contract takes a Ukrainian company significantly longer.
🔹Third markets. A joint venture with a European partner behind it means a different level of trust — and the option to sell beyond Ukraine and the EU, in Asia for example.

Separately — the risk that worries European companies most: producing 100,000 drones that are no longer relevant at the front by the time they are delivered.

"The answer is having a Ukrainian partner. In a joint venture, it is the local partner who is responsible for fast feedback. If that loop is in place, you have time to change the fast-moving components — for frequencies under EW, for example," — Andrii Hryshchuk.

And two practical points for companies entering the market now: set up dual incorporation early (a 100% Ukrainian-owned company with a holding structure) — registration and bank accounts take months; diversify manufacturing sites across regions and reserve critical staff, knowing that under the current rules the whole team cannot be reserved.

03/09/2026

Yana Shkvarovska, Director of the Defence Builder Accelerator, writes for Defender Media on how a request from the front becomes an engineering task — and what to check before the first field test.

The op-ed lays out how the accelerator works with military requests, from the first conversation with a unit to a product's readiness for the field. The latest of those conversations took place in Donetsk region, where Yana and Roman Pohorilyi, co-founder of DeepStateUA and member of the Defence Builder Advisory Board, worked with brigade and battalion commanders, operators and heads of repair workshops.

Key takeaways:
🔹 Talk to the commander, the operator and the repair workshop. Each sees a different part of the system, and a realistic engineering task appears where these perspectivesmeet.
🔹 Ask about the task,the reqired result tand the operating constraints. "What solution do you need" jumps straight to a product and skips the problem.
🔹 A request from a single unit stays a field signal until other units describe the same need. Then it is checked for feasibility and against solutions already on the market, and only after that becomes a direction for the cohort.
🔹 Directions are set as hypotheses for six to twelve months. Tactics, countermeasures and component availability change faster than a product reaches the field, so the list is reviewed regularly.
🔹 The brief should cover at least the required effect, integration context, constraints, load on the operator, expected behaviour on failure and the verification scenario. Success criteria should be defined before testing begins.
🔹 Check the basics before the main technology: transport, repeatable start-up, deployment time, user workload and, where relevant, predictable behaviour if communication is lost.
🔹 A failed field test creates value only when the team records what failed, under which conditions and what must change before the next iteration . The worst outcome is repeating the test with nothing changed.

Read the full op-ed via the link in comments.

31/08/2026

We have released the Investor Decision Framework — a practical guide to how capital gets matched to maturity in defence tech.

In a battlefield-driven environment the technology moves faster than the process funding it, and most deals break on a mismatch rather than on the product — equity priced before the lab result holds, debt proposed against letters of intent, certification treated as something to handle after the first foreign order rather than before it. The framework turns that into a repeatable sequence.

🔹Who it is for. Founders raising in defence tech, who get to see why a deal is structured the way it is and what evidence changes that. And investors looking at Ukrainian defence companies, who get a sequence for verification and instrument selection.

🔹What is in the document:
— the capital staircase: which instrument belongs at which TRL band, and why
— nine gates to clear before capital moves, each with a defined fallback
— the risk × revenue matrix: where senior debt belongs and where it does not
— the three Ukraine lanes — certification, IP, export control — that have to run in parallel rather than in sequence
— the data room request list, and the six deal-breakers that stop a process rather than repricing it

Get the full version on our website: https://defencebuilder.com/news/defence-builder-releases-the-investor-decision-framework

The document is built in part on the report "The Ukrainian Defense Technology Market: Opportunities for US Investors" by KSE Institute, Defence Builder and Brave1. Framework summary for discussion purposes — not investment, legal or tax advice.

28/08/2026

Buntar Aerospace is in the six largest disclosed rounds of the year by Vestbee.

The list, in order: Preply at $150M, UFORCE at $50M, HOLYWATER TECH at $22M, Haiqu at $11M, Buntar Aerospace at $10.4M, and Farsight Vision at €7.2M. Four of the six are defence tech. Buntar raised its round from Axon Enterprise and Munkene AS to scale reconnaissance drones and mission software.

Buntar, Uforce and Farsight are presented as evidence that defence financing in Ukraine is moving from small cheques toward institutional VC and strategic corporate investment. That is a change in the type of capital entering the sector, not just the amount.

The supporting numbers: Ukrainian defence tech attracted more than $129 million in grants and equity in 2025 — up 119% from $59 million the year before — with foreign investors providing 49% of it. KPMG counted four Ukrainian defence tech transactions above $5 million in H1 2026, against one in H1 2025.

Defence Builder backed Buntar early, well before rounds of this size were available to Ukrainian defence companies. That is the part of the work we care about: the capital that arrives when the technology is validated but the market has not yet priced it. Strategic investors like Axon come in after that question is answered — and the gap between those two moments is exactly where an early fund is either useful or it is not.

Congrats to Ivan Kaunov and Bohdan Sas!

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