Entrepreneur Oleg Roginsky's venture Freedom Fund has invested in about 30 Ukrainian defense tech projects since 2022. The size of the fund itself is several tens of millions of dollars, and a typical check is $100,000–200,000. At the same time, the names of most companies in the portfolio are not disclosed.
Entrepreneur Oleg Roginsky's venture Freedom Fund has invested in about 30 Ukrainian defense tech projects since 2022. The size of the fund itself is several tens of millions of dollars, and a typical check is $100,000–200,000. At the same time, the names of most companies in the portfolio are not disclosed.
Defendr Media reports on this.
Roginsky recalls that at the beginning of the Great War, a normal venture capital market for Ukrainian defense tech practically did not exist. Because of this, strong teams sometimes took their first money from non-core investors on very unfavorable terms. For example, they gave away 50% of the company for a relatively small check. For subsequent professional investors, such an ownership structure could become a serious stop signal.
Then Freedom Fund decided to be the first professional investor for such teams — to provide start-up capital and help immediately properly formalize the company and the deal.
Only five companies are publicly known: Farsight Vision, HIMERA, M-FLY, MaXon Systems, and Bravo Dynamics. Roginsky himself explains this secrecy as a deliberate strategy, as Freedom Fund is ready to work with teams that do not want to publicly talk about their developments and investments.
One of the Freedom Fund’s early bets was MaXon Systems, which is developing a virtual “autopilot” to intercept “Shaheeds.” In August 2025, the startup raised $300,000 from Freedom Fund, Defender Ventures, and a business angel. At the time, the company was working on an air defense system where interceptor drones were planned to be placed on balloons around the city, and thermal imaging cameras were to detect “Shaheeds.”
After combat testing, the team shelved the concept and essentially built a new ground-launched interceptor from scratch. The small, aircraft-type drone can reach speeds of up to 300 km/h, and most of the process — from launch to final targeting of the Shahed — is automated.
MaXon's main goal is to automate the interception process as much as possible. After the operator's command, the drone launches and gains altitude on its own, and at the final stage, the AI finds the target, tracks it, and brings the interceptor into the detonation zone. Navigation works even without GPS — ground beacons and onboard sensors help with this. During combat tests, according to the developers, 90–95% of the process took place autonomously.
Freedom Fund also became the first investor for HIMERA, which at that time, according to co-founder Misha Rudominsky, worked more like a volunteer project. Since then, the company has supplied more than 6,000 of its radios to the Defense Forces, and during the tests of the HIMERA G1 PRO, the military received stable communication at a distance of 45 km without additional equipment. The company's radios were also transferred to the US Air Force for testing, and in 2025, HIMERA fulfilled its first state order for the Ministry of Defense of a European NATO country.
Another Freedom Fund portfolio company is Farsight Vision. In just a few years, the startup has gone from initial sales to a platform that automatically analyzes drone data and can now recognize more than 30 types of objects, from military equipment to electronic warfare antennas and caterpillar tracks. In July, the company also launched a target search directly from a drone's video feed and a separate tool that can determine the location of an enemy UAV based on an intercepted broadcast from its camera.
M-FLY, which Freedom Fund also invested in, has created its own laser guidance system. It allows drones to operate without GPS and constant communication with the operator, and the company itself claimed over 95% hits during tests. In 2025, the startup began preparing the solution for mass production, and its camera stabilizers have already been integrated into Ukrainian reconnaissance UAVs.
And Bravo Dynamics, another Freedom Fund portfolio company, introduced the Phantom mesh system for communicating with ground robots. Its first versions have passed front-line testing and evaluation by Brave1, and already in 2026 the company demonstrated the operation of the network under the influence of electronic warfare: the robot transmitted video and commands without losing communication even after going 90 meters deep into the forest belt. The system already has commercial sales and integration agreements with Ukrainian NRC manufacturers.
Previously, dev.ua wrote that public investments in Ukrainian defense tech increased almost 100 times in 2023–2025 — from $1.1 million to $105.2 million.
