Ukrainian defense technology company UFORCE has raised $700 million in a funding round, valuing it at $6 billion, amid growing investor interest in autonomous weapons systems tested on Ukrainian battlefields.
UFORCE, which develops air, sea and land unmanned systems and the AI software used to coordinate them, raised $50 million in March at a valuation of about $1 billion.
The Series A round was co-led by Valor Equity Partners and the UK’s Wealth Fund, with participation from investors from Silicon Valley, Europe and Asia, the company announced on Thursday.
UFORCE CEO Oleg Roginsky told CNBC that the company’s bookings have more than doubled over the past year from a base of hundreds of millions of dollars, but he declined to provide more precise numbers.
He said the company’s financial performance justified the latest valuation, adding that UFORCE had received offers from investors at even higher valuations.
“We had offers at much higher valuations, but we chose this one for the sake of Valor and our other investors,” Roginsky said. “It’s not really a positive valuation in terms of valuation against bookings, valuation against revenue.”
The company plans to use the new funding to expand manufacturing in Ukraine and allied countries including the United States, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East.
NATO and allied startups have raised $27.1 billion through September, nearly double the total for all of 2025, according to an October report from Dealroom and Resilience Media.
Roginsky said UFORCE already builds 10 times as many unmanned surface ships as its regular competitors and aims to significantly increase its manufacturing capacity. CNBC could not independently verify the comparison.
The expansion comes as militaries around the world seek to learn from the Ukraine war, with relatively inexpensive drones challenging the role of traditional military equipment such as manned tanks and fighter jets.
UFORCE says its NEMESIS drones have completed more than 300,000 combat flights and helped MAGURA naval vessels destroy more than a dozen Russian warships in the Black Sea.
Roginsky said the company is already working with several NATO countries, but declined to identify customers or say how much of its production is supplied to the Ukrainian and foreign markets.
Asked if supplies could be diverted from Ukraine due to increased international demand, he said the company is fully committed to meeting Ukraine’s military requirements first.
“We are very careful in this regard and strive to first and foremost meet all the needs of Ukraine,” he said.
modern war
Like many of its peers, UFORCE seeks to challenge the economics of conventional warfare, arguing that deploying large numbers of inexpensive autonomous systems can provide defense that is significantly cheaper than conventional weapons.
Roginsky said Ukrainian defense technology companies have an advantage over established Western manufacturers because their engineers receive continuous feedback from military personnel who use their equipment on the battlefield.
“Of course, the speed of innovation of Ukrainian defense technology companies is much faster compared to prime and Western defense technology companies,” he said.
Looking further into the future, Roginsky predicted that much of the military equipment currently operated by humans, such as aircraft and ships, will be gradually replaced by autonomous systems.
He said he couldn’t imagine the military continuing to buy new manned aircraft and frigates 10 years from now, but acknowledged that traditional equipment such as F-35 jets will remain important in the short term.
