Ukrainian investment syndicate Toloka.VC invested $2.5 million in 27 startups from the Y Combinator accelerator’s winter 2026 batch, forming a diversified portfolio of early-stage companies.
Ukrainian investment syndicate Toloka.VC invested $2.5 million in 27 startups from the Y Combinator accelerator’s winter 2026 batch, forming a diversified portfolio of early-stage companies.
According to a Toloka.VC press release, the deal was implemented together with the Founder Factor syndicate, which provides access to some startups even before Demo Day. This allows you to invest in companies before the most attractive rounds close.
The portfolio includes, in particular, Robby, Carson, 10x Science, Vector Legal, Piris Labs, One Robot, RoboDock, Panta, Samora AI, Voltair, Reframe, Corvera, Mango Medical, Constellation Space, SpotPay, Mendral, Seeing Systems, Polymorph, Oxus, Cajal, EigenPal, Fort, Cumulus Labs, Jinba, Klaus AI, CellType and Crosslayer Labs.
Most of them work in the field of AI solutions, but in different niches: from business process automation and DevOps to cybersecurity, fintech, medicine and defense technologies. For example, SpotPay is building a financial infrastructure based on stablecoins, Seeing Systems is developing autonomous drones for defense, and Mendral is creating a development support engineer that automatically finds and fixes problems in software delivery.
Toloka.VC explains that it is betting on a portfolio model: investing in dozens of companies at once increases the chances of getting a few strong «winners» that will shape the main result. The syndicate plans to scale this approach and bring the Y Combinator startup portfolio to 80–100 companies.
Participating in such deals gives access to startups even before the open round on Demo Day, when the strongest companies often close financing. Because of this, most investors do not get into the most promising projects. The partnership with Founder Factor allows Toloka.VC to bypass this limitation and enter into deals at an early stage, when competition for shares is even lower and the potential upside is higher.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how the Ukrainian venture syndicate Toloka.vc invested 186,000 pounds sterling in the British GIN e-bikes, which is developing an electric bike sharing service under the PLUTO brand in London.
