Startup

This year’s largest technology exhibition, CES 2025, which took place on January 7–10 in Las Vegas, was attended by 18 Ukrainian companies. In the second pavilion, startups from Profeed, which are developing an IT system that manages the feeding of cows, pigs, and chickens on a livestock farm, presented their solution. And although the exhibition is not specialized for agribusiness, the founder of the project, Serhiy Ryzhkov, said that the startups met many representatives of real livestock farming from different countries there. The agricultural sector is also not a core area for dev.ua materials, but we became very interested in how automation can be used to set up an almost animal restaurant. The founder of the business, Serhiy Ryzhkov, spoke about this, as well as how the startup developed, how much it managed to achieve, and what markets they plan to conquer.

On January 15, Ukrainian startup LetsData, which uses AI tools to detect potential information attacks, announced that it had raised a funding round of about $1.6 million from a number of institutional venture funds and angel investors. According to co-founder Andriy Kusy, the funds will be directed both to technology development and to sales and marketing, in order to try to maintain the current growth rate of 300% and into 2025.

Yulia Tkachenko is a student of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, studying economics, but has been fascinated by technology and science for several years. The girl is a resident of Ukrainian Future, a business incubator of the Small Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and has won many national and international scientific competitions in physics. Yulia developed an application for sports and rehabilitation OUTEX, in which AI independently corrects the execution of exercises. Yulia told dev.ua about how the application works, how the girl created a startup, and whether she plans to become a unicorn.

Engineer, and eventually software developer, Vadim Pasko launched the SplineCloud web platform for knowledge exchange and management in engineering and science. The idea, which was born in 2015, has come a long way. Currently, the platform is used by about 500 engineers and scientists from different parts of the world, who, with the help of free repositories, can facilitate the process of implementing engineering projects without spending months on rediscovering and rethinking existing knowledge and data. Vadim told dev.ua about the development of the startup despite all the challenges: from the birth of the idea to cooperation with NAU and participation in WebSummit 2024, as well as about the investments attracted.

Every month we share stories of small and medium-sized technology businesses and projects that bring our victory over Russia closer.

Today, it was announced that the Ukrainian startup Deus Robotics has secured $3 million in investments from local funds. The contributors include 1991 Ventures, SID VP, Sigma Software Labs, and SD Capital, co-owned by Andriy Stavnitser and Philip Hrushko. This latest round brings Deus Robotics' total funding to $6.6 million. Following this investment, the company’s valuation has risen by one-third to $20 million. At the ForbesTech conference in November, we spoke with Antonina Iermeichuk, COO and co-founder of Deus Robotics. She shared insights on the company’s traction, explained why they don’t view Amazon as a competitor, and discussed their strategic shift to focus on software by outsourcing the production of smart robots to partners. We’re publishing this brief interview below.

Danylo Golota is the co-founder and CMO of the Fintellect startup and a 3OSHB serviceman. His team describes the eponymous application as a «smart platform for managing money for service companies.» In particular, these are design studios, IT outsourcing, consulting companies, and other businesses that sell professional services. Despite the fact that the product appeared at an inconvenient time — just on the eve of a full-scale invasion, and part of the team actively volunteered, they had enough strength and perseverance to significantly improve the first version of the application and bring it to the market. In 2023-2024, the startup attracted investment and entered the American Berkeley Skydeck accelerator. At the same time, Danylo himself has moved from active volunteering to serving in the ranks of the Defense Forces. He does not disclose his current role in the 3rd Military School, but in an interview he makes it clear that he is currently applying his professional skills and IT background in the army. From dev.ua, Danylo Golota talked about how the product came about and what plans the team has for the near future; how you manage to promote it while being in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine; and what it takes to get noticed in the army and use your acquired skills rationally.