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Олександр КузьменкоAround IT
29 June 2026, 12:23
2026-06-29
Shymkiv on Ukrainian technologies: "We must learn to protect our own know-how"
Ukrainian defense tech startups have real revenue and battle-tested technologies, but attract meager investments compared to Western competitors. This was emphasized by defense technology figure Dmytro Shymkiv. According to him, while foreign developers are collecting hundreds of millions for beautiful presentations, it is time for the domestic defense industry to learn how to protect its own intellectual property and demand a fair market valuation.
Ukrainian defense tech startups have real revenue and battle-tested technologies, but attract meager investments compared to Western competitors. This was emphasized by defense technology figure Dmytro Shymkiv. According to him, while foreign developers are collecting hundreds of millions for beautiful presentations, it is time for the domestic defense industry to learn how to protect its own intellectual property and demand a fair market valuation.
Thus, the former Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration responded to a post by entrepreneur Yaroslav Azhnyuk on Facebook.
Earlier, Azhnyuk drew attention to the fact that the German defense startup Stark attracted a record investment round of 500 million euros from large American and European funds. He noted that the investment rounds of Western companies are similar in size to the annual revenue of Ukrainian defense enterprises. At the same time, the real annual revenue of foreign players is often comparable to the investments that Ukrainian developers manage to attract — from $0 to several million dollars.
Shymkiv agreed with this assessment and added that in 2022–2023, during the formation of our defense tech sector, Ukraine was visited by numerous foreign technology scouts. They collected experience, statistics, and engineering solutions to reproduce them in their countries. However, only a few of them opened real representative offices in Ukraine or invested in local production. In contrast, the failures of well-known foreign defense companies, such as failed first flight tests, quickly disappeared from the information field of Western media.
Today, the situation has changed, and competition in the global market is becoming much tougher, and the exchange of knowledge can no longer be open. Data, statistics, technical solutions, components and program code are increasingly becoming the subject of protection, because real results on the battlefield, not beautiful marketing, are becoming decisive.
«And while Ukraine continues to fight, build production, and improve its technologies every day under fire, our competitors use our experience and our stories to attract capital in the markets. They are often more willing to invest in beautiful presentations, animation, and AI-generated videos than in technologies proven on the battlefield,» notes Dmytro Shymkiv.
He emphasized that the Ukrainian community must continue to cooperate with the world, but at the same time must learn to protect its own developments, program code, and component base. The next step for Ukrainian companies should not be waiting for recognition, but independently forming the rules of the game, where technologies will be evaluated for their real effectiveness.
It was previously reported that the US is supplying the Middle East with thousands of Merops complexes with Surveyor anti-aircraft drones, developed by Eric Schmidt’s company, who previously headed Google. They were created based on the expertise of the Ukrainian military and tested in Ukraine.
