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Олександр КузьменкоStartup
13 November 2026, 10:36
2026-11-13
"I don't understand why software isn't sexy in defense". CEO of deftech startup UFORCE talks about investments exclusively in Ukraine and a single AI platform for drone swarms
Part of the record $700 million in investments raised by defense technology company UFORCE, under the terms of an agreement with a sovereign investor, can be used exclusively in Ukraine. At the same time, the company's main product is not individual drones, but a single software ecosystem with artificial intelligence that combines sea, air and land systems in a multi-domain swarm.
Part of the record $700 million in investments raised by defense technology company UFORCE, under the terms of an agreement with a sovereign investor, can be used exclusively in Ukraine. At the same time, the company's main product is not individual drones, but a single software ecosystem with artificial intelligence that combines sea, air and land systems in a multi-domain swarm.
This was stated by UFORCE CEO Oleg Roginsky in an interview with Forbes Ukraine.
According to the company's head, the Series A investment round has a clear division: funds from one of the sovereign funds will be directed exclusively to the Ukrainian direction, while the rest of the capital will be used to scale supply chains and production abroad. For R&D, the company continues to hire specialists in Ukraine as much as possible, attracting foreign specialists (in particular, those from SpaceX, Tesla, and OpenAI) only due to the shortage of personnel in the local market.
Oleg Roginsky notes that despite the media attention to hardware developments such as Magura marine drones or Nemesis drones, the main value of UFORCE is the software itself.
“I don’t understand why software isn’t sexy in defense. This is the most interesting part: one software stack controls systems at sea, in the air, and on land. It works both via the cloud and autonomously on devices in the absence of communication. All this is integrated with artificial intelligence. Software is ten times more important than you might think from the news. It is what investors are interested in,” explained the CEO of UFORCE.
The main goal of AI integration is to allow a single operator to effectively control a thousand drones simultaneously. It was the depth of software development, swarm coordination, and multi-domain integration that became decisive factors for investors, including the Valor fund, when evaluating the company.
“We already have swarms of multi-domain drones, where Nemesis-type drones take off from Magura and everything works together using AI. Swarms of five drones are not new to us. Work on swarms is underway, the infrastructure is there, customers are buying more,” Roginsky added, noting that there is high demand for this infrastructure abroad.
It was previously reported that Ukrainian defense startupUFORCE closed a Series A investment round worth $700 million at a business valuation of $6 billion . The company plans to invest the raised capital in scaling unmanned systems, expanding production capacities in Ukraine and partner countries, as well as in developing laser interception systems and turrets to combat Shahed strike drones.
