What has happened in the Ukrainian tech market in May 2021?

R&D and new offices in Ukraine

American ride-sharing company Lyft will open an R&D center in Kyiv, Ukraine. Lyft Kyiv team will concentrate its efforts on the Mapping domain and the core development of engineering will be GIS and Cartography – read

EPAM Ukraine, a leading global product development, digital platform engineering, and top digital and product design agency, announced an opening of a new office in Ivano-Frankivsk in autumn – the most comfortable city in Ukraine for IT specialists according to the rating by Developers.Org.Ua – read

Ukrainian retail chain Fozzy Group established the R&D center of AI and innovations. Aiming to create cutting-edge solutions for retail, logistics, and restaurant business, Laboratory Zi is a part of TemaBit, the ІТ-developer of the holding – read

Venture capital and startups:

SpaceTech company Firefly Aerospace, founded by Ukrainian Max Polyakov, raised $75 million just ahead of the launch of the company’s first rocket (in June). The money comes from a group of investors including DADA Holdings, Raven One Ventures, and Canon Ball. Firefly expects to try and raise another $300 million later this year – read

Italian company Avio S.p.A will buy 10 more engines for VEGA rocket made by the Ukrainian Yuzhnoye State Design Office, one of the most well-known and recognized scientific and design companies in the world in the field of space technology development – read

Ukrainian Startup Fund announced 12 winners of 23-24th Pitch Days. Startups that received pre-seed grants ($25000): GeronCore, Supplio.io, Harmix, Horos.TECH (AGRO BI), Erudito, Ademrius, Artera,Auto BI. Seed grants ($50000): effa, Caretech.human, SmartReader, Fiway – read

Ukrainian fund Roosh Ventures, founded by Reface investors Sergey Tokarev and Denys Dmytrenko, took part in a $100 Mln investment round at a valuation of about $800 million in Oura, a Finnish maker of devices that track sleep, physical activity and other measures of well-being – read

Ukrainian Venture fund TA Ventures and private investors club ICLUB participated in a $50 Mln round in Spanish Impress, direct-to-consumer orthodontics startup. The Series A round was led by CareCapital along with Nickleby capital, UNIQA Ventures, and others – read

Ukrainian VC fund Adventures‌ ‌Lab‌ led the $300k funding round to the Belarus-based startup EduDo‌, mobile learning platform with short user-generated interactive videos. The round also involved participation from the Cyprus-based company Embria and business angel Dmitry Vasilyev (investor in HyperAuditor and NordicBlocks – read

Co-founded by Ukrainian Alex Fedorov Binance launches the largest NFT marketplace that will bring together artists, creators, and investors from around the world. Also, Binance recently led the funding round for NFTb, a community-owned NFT platform that is itself built on the Binance platform – read

Astound Commerce, with development centers and a team of more than 850 IT professionals in five cities in Ukraine, has announced strategic investments from California-based RLH Equity Partners with the additional participation of Salesforce, a corporate investment group, Salesforce Ventures. The amount of the deal is currently unknown – read

Vimeo, the world’s leading all-in-one video software solution will begin trading on Nasdaq under the symbol “VMEO.” The company has an R&D office in Zaporizhzhya where works 34 tech specialists – read

Ukrainian Culver Aviation, developer of high technology in light aviation with extreme aero-efficiency, became a part of the international technology holding Techiia holding – read

Ecosystem news:

Ukraine is listed 27th on the annual report of Expat Insider 2021 by a network for expats InterNations that explore the best and worst places to feel at home abroad. Ukraine is also in the top 10 in the category of finding friends – read

Firefly Aerospace was awarded a contract to SpaceX to launch its Blue Ghost lunar lander in 2023. Blue Ghost will be carrying 10 payloads for NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) task order 19D mission, in addition to separately contracted commercial payloads. Also, the company was shortlisted at the global space transportation list by Dealroom – read

World-renown wireless security system Ajax Systems where the team presented new products & software, and Aleksandr Konotopskyi announced expansion plans in the USA, Canada, Latin America, and India – read

Ukrainian Petcube products have 4 spots in the top 5 by USA TODAY’s Reviewed in the category “The best smart pet cameras of 2021”: Petcube Cam, Petcube Bites 2, Petcube Bites, Petcube Play 2 – read

MacPaw announced the opening of the public Apple Museum (now in progress) in MacPaw Space, Kyiv with the big mission to befriend humans and technology. The collection includes 323 exhibits, including Apple’s iconic products and fascinating stories about Apple’s behind the scenes – read

Decided to Kyiv Day Reface with a new Swap Animation feature “revived” the famous Kyiv murals and “taught” them to sing – read

Ukraine plans to join the European Space Agency, and build its own cosmodrome and launch seven satellites into orbit, said Volodomyr Taftay, the Head of the National Space Agency (First Business TV). Building on Ukraine’s rocket legacy from the Soviet era, the government has allotted $542 million to spend on the space program through to 2025 – read

The former vice president of the IT company Luxoft, Vitalii Nuzhnyi, has announced the launch of his own company, TRIOS, which will specialize in consulting and software development for foreign customers – read

Government news

Within the “All-Ukrainian Forum “Ukraine 30. Digitalization” conference that was dedicated to the key goals of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the objectives for the next three years, the Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov declared the strategic goal to digitize 100% of public services in 3 years. The Ministry team presented more than 10 new services in the Diia (Action – ed.) including changing a place of registration, paying taxes, changing driver’s license, registering business, digital signature and e-petitions – all these online, in a few clicks. Simple, convenient, without unnecessary nerves, officials and bribes – read

The Government launched the Creative Economy Development Council powered by the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy and the Minister of Digital Transformation. The temporary advisory body of the Cabinet of Ministers will help solve problems and stimulate the sphere – read

UAmachinery & UAcreativeindustries project

The story is about filming the video of Oculus made by Ukrainian Radioaktive Film, the leading film service production in Ukraine – read

The story of Ukrainian 3DLOOK that helped 1822 DENIM, a women’s denim brand based in New York City, reduce returns by 30% while increasing conversions by 4x using in-house invention – read

The story of V-Art, a platform that provides a comprehensive ecosystem for artists, collectors, and other art market professionals through an NFT+ marketplace, virtual exhibition technology as well as networking tools, and high-quality content – raed

The story is about the Ukrainian IT-Enterprise, a market leader in implementing solutions for medium and large enterprises, that provided the mechanical processing manufacture for aerospace industry FED JSC an automated production planning system that enabled FED management to avoid disrupting important contracts with the world-leading aircraft manufacturers totaling $ 90 million – read

The story is about the Ukrainian innovative engineering company ELEKS enhanced the manufacturing productivity of Bader Ukraine, leading leather producer for the automotive industry, by conducting the process of Data Collection and Data Labelling for further model training and automatic defect detection – read

The story of DroneUA which unlocks the potential of implementing drones, software, big data that help Ukrainian farmers be more competitive and sustainable – read

Reports:

Expat Insider 2021 by InterNations – read

Big Tech’s Playbook 2021 by CB Insights – read

Deloitte 2021 Global Automotive Consumers – read

Facebook games marketing report 2021 – read

The most prominent VC investors 2021 by Dealroom – read

The future of marketplaces 2021 by Dealroom – read

Via TechUkraine, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, DOU, The Block, AIN, UBN, Mind.ua, Cases