Ukraine has produced some of the world's most well-known companies and products, such as Grammarly, GitLab and more. In the most recent rankings, the Ukrainian startup ecosystem stands at the 49th position globally, despite what has occurred in the last two years- highlighting the resilience of Ukrainian founders. Kyiv's ranking as a startup ecosystem has also moved up 16 places, occupying the 77th rank globally. This underscores the fact that there are still brilliant Ukrainian startups being established all the time.
Investment in the startup ecosystem of Ukraine is more important now than ever. There are more than 25 incubators and accelerators that can help concept-stage startups with early-funding and mentorship so they can achieve viability. Later-stage funding has become more difficult to achieve, however, there are still more than 60 Venture Capital funds supporting Ukrainian startups. Google and a range of other businesses have launched Ukraine-specific funds and grants and free services to support Ukrainian founders with growing their businesses in challenging circumstances.
Despite the ongoing situation, the Ukrainian government has still attempted to create an environment where Ukrainian startups can thrive. For example, the government has created a program where new IT startups can receive $50,000 in concept and Seed funding in the form of grants, with this program lasting until the end of 2025. It has also supported the creation of Startup Ukraine, an entity that provides resources and tools to support new founders, along with a range of networking opportunities. This helps early-stage startups in Ukraine to survive and thrive in the current climate.
1. Zibra AI
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 11-50
Founders: Alex Petrenko, Vladyslav Zavadskyi, Den Dmytrenko
Zibra AI is a Ukrainian startup that was founded in 2021 and is currently headquartered in Kyiv. Its AI-powered platform allows you to easily generate assets to fuel your team's creative processes. In addition to this, it can also generate a range of practical effects for your gaming environments, such as liquid, smoke and fire with functioning physics to make your worlds more immersive. Finally, it has a brilliant rendering tool that can quickly compress and render a range of effects and visuals in high-quality.
Zibra has successfully raised VC funding to support it in the next stages of its development. This investment occurred in August 2023 and it raised $500,000 during this funding round, from Andreesen Horowitz. Zibra AI will use this funding to expand its internal team and allow it to focus more resources on developing its generative AI engine to support its customers with their creative needs.
2. Carbominer
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 1-10
Founders: Nick Oseyko
Carbominer is a Ukrainian CleanTech startup that is developing a range of modular and affordable solutions for Co2 capture and removal. Its portable units allow you to easily remove carbon using a mix of dry and wet storage solutions, and it has advantages in being able to use intermittent energy resources such as renewable energy. The affordability comes from the fact that you only have to pay for the Co2 that is being delivered, giving you a renewable and sustainable source of carbon for your plant growing operations.
Carbominer has generated a lot of interest from government agencies and institutional investors for its carbon capture and reuse solutions. It has leveraged this interest to receive 1.5 Million Euros of grant funding from the EIC Accelerator Fund. In addition to this, Carbominer is also eligible for a further 7.5 Million Euros in funding at the later stages of the project as required.
3. Empat
Year Founded: 2018
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 51-100
Founders: Nazar Gulyk
Empat is a startup in Ukraine that specialises in software development for a number of use cases, such as healthcare, FinTech, Education and more. It has a range of software experts that can easily create responsive solutions for you, at a competitive cost to ensure you are getting value for your money. They can help you with all types of development, including for mobile apps, websites, products and more. Giving you a capable and reliable design partner for all of your needs.
Despite the growth experienced by Empat, it has not yet publicly sought any external startup funding to support it in this growth. If the team has ambitions to expand its operations into new counties and bring in new in-house developers, it is likely that external investment will be required.
4. Reface
Year Founded: 2018
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 101-250
Founders: Den Dmytrenko, Dima Shvets, Ivan Altsybieiev, Kyrylo Syhyda, Oles Petriv, Roman Mogylnyi, Yaroslav Boiko
Reface is a Ukrainian startup that has developed a fun app that you can use to swap the faces of people in any video or photo. You can even animate your photos and turn them into cartoons, giving you endless creative possibilities. Utilising its AI-backed solution, you can also use artificial intelligence to transform your videos and photos to meet your specifications, without having to do all of the hard work that comes with it. It is also developing a range of content creation tools to save you time and effort.
Reface has only sought funding once since being founded, with this funding taking place during a December 2020 Seed Round. The $5.5 Million that was raised has been used to accelerate product development, such as the creation of tools capable of detecting deep fakes and accelerating the acquisition of new users to the platform.
5. Osavul
Year Founded: 2022
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 11-50
Founders: Dmytro Bilash, Dmytro Plieshakov
Osavul is a Ukrainian startup that operates in the Cybersecurity market, using AI-powered solutions to enhance your security. This is achieved through a suite of tools that can help you to identify and deal with informational threats, a tool that can be used to identify inauthentic interactions on your social media platforms, assistance with the day to day operations of your security teams and monitoring and analysis tools for your web assets and social media platforms.
Osavul saw its first success for raising investment in May 2023, when it raised a total of $1 Million, highlighting investor confidence in the mission of identifying and removing malicious content, as well as identifying any potential informational threats that may arise for businesses and governments. This funding was used to help Osavul to grow its internal team, so it can facilitate further product development and international expansion.
6. Fairo
Year Founded: 2019
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 101-250
Founders: George Chamoun
Fairo is a startup in Ukraine that makes use of artificial intelligence in order to help you to create better AI solutions for your company, that carry less risk, less development costs and more return on investment. It has created a whole development ecosystem that can provide an environment for testing new deployments, creating workflows and processes, managing your ML operations and having general oversight through the use of a centralised dashboard. This gives you full visibility into the whole design process at all times.
Despite the huge growth of Fairo since being founded, it has not been announced that it has sought any startup funding. It is impressive that Fiaro has managed to expand its headcount so aggressively and it is very likely to be successful if it attempts to raise investment to expand into overseas markets.
7. EvaCodes
Year Founded: 2019
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 51-100
Founders: Vitalii Basiuk
EvaCodes is a Blockchain startup in Ukraine that was founded in 2019 and is helping to develop the infrastructure of the future digital world. By providing development services for a range of different cryptocurrency and Web 3 projects, it can help you to launch your project even quicker and at a smaller cost than usual. Its custom software development experts will be able to bring your idea to life and help you generate the community that you need for it to be successful.
EvaCodes last attempted to raise startup funding in July 2022, in which it was successful raising $500,000 from Hypra Fund. The funding has been used to attract new blockchain engineers to work with the company and to expand its client portfolio through greater sales and marketing activity, with a view to launching its own blockchain products in 3-5 years.
8. Mindly
Year Founded: 2022
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 11-50
Founders: Dima Podoliev, Maria Smerechuk
Mindly is a Ukranian health startup that operates specifically within the mental health niche. It provides a platform that allows its users to connect with licensed therapists using its online platform. With the whole end-to-end process being completed on the platform. This makes finding a therapist and attending appointments much easier and more convenient for people that need mental health support. This is becoming particularly important in the current political climate in Ukraine.
Mindly has recently achieved good success in raising investment. In January 2024, it raised a total of $2 Million during this Seed round off the back of $10 Million annual turnover. It aims to use this funding to tap into unexplored market opportunities across the rest of Europe, Africa, Asia and the United States.
9. Knowledgator Engineering
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 1-10
Founders: Ihor Stepanov, Maxim Nikolaenko, Valerii Vasilevskyi
Knowledgator Engineering is a Ukrainian startup that was founded in 2021 and is currently based in Kyiv. It is boosting the artificial intelligence market through the provision of its open-source ML research. This allows you to easily extract information using a range of fundamental models in order to advance human knowledge. This makes it easier and cheaper for you to build efficient AI for information extraction using a solution that is specifically tailored to your needs.
Knowledgator has received support for its mission to democratise AI, having received $35,000 from the Ukrainian Startup Funding in January 2023 and $55,000 in Seed funding from Startup Wise Guys in May 2022. This puts the valuation of it, anywhere between 220,000 to 330,000 Euros.
10. Oriole Insights
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 11-50
Founders: Vladyslav Skakun
Oriole Insights is a startup in Ukraine that has developed an effective price prediction platform that is implemented into an easy-to-understand gaming format. This platform allows you to get rapid access to information about how the community feels about certain crypto projects, which in turn allows you to get a prediction of the price of the token for that specific project. This makes identifying which projects to invest in much easier, as you get a real insight into overall investor confidence.
Oriole Ventures has only required a single round of startup funding to meet its initial business goals, with this round taking place in October 2021, shortly after being founded. This round netted Oriole Insights $1 Million in funding. This funding has been used to improve the effectiveness of the price prediction algorithms, as well as improve its customer acquisition capabilities.
11. Codebridge
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 51-100
Founders: Konstantin Karpushin
Codebridge is a Ukrainian startup that was founded in 2020 and provides a leading IT outsourcing service for companies internationally. Through their support, you're able to get support with developing new software packages for your customers, help with developing an effective user interface and experience and you can even make use of outstaffing opportunities for both the US and Europe, having fulfilled more than 500 projects for its clients.
Codebridge has seen great success, expanding to have more than 50 employees in less than four years, however, it has not yet seen the need to pursue startup investment in order to achieve its growth goals. Due to the international nature of the team, Codebridge can benefit from multiple avenues of securing funding in different countries if the management team decides to pursue external investment.
12. Respeecher
Year Founded: 2018
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 11-50
Founders: Konstantin Karpushin
Reespeecher is a startup in Ukraine that was founded in 2018 and helps you as a content creator to get more options for voice overs. By using Respeecher, you can get effective, crisp and high-quality voice cloning software that clearly identifies the type of voice you want to use for your campaign and implements this, giving you a synthetic voice that sounds just like the real thing. This takes a lot of the difficulty out of recording voice overs, especially if you don't like your own voice.
Respeecher will have been delighted with its recent success in securing startup funding, with its most recent funding round taking place in December 2023. During this round, it raised a total of $1 Million which it will use to create new studios and develop a range of new voices and integrated tools for the platform.
13. Hackless
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 1-10
Founders: Serhii Androsiuk
Hackless is a Ukrainian startup that was founded in 2021 and operates in the cybersecurity market. Specifically, it creates solutions for DeFi security. This allows you to protect your crypto assets from a range of attacks, including phishing, hacking and a range of other attack types. It is the first out of the box solution targeted at protecting smart contracts specifically, which are the backbone of any crypto project. Without a secure smart contract, you won't attract users to your project.
Hackless has recently achieved its greatest funding goal to date, completing a funding round in December 2023 for $1.2 Million. These funds are intended to be used so that Hackless can make further developments and enhancements to its security platform through hiring experienced blockchain security experts.
14. Monobank
Year Founded: 2017
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 51-100
Founders: Oleg Gorokhovskyi, Misha Rogalskiy, Dima Dubilet
Monobank is a Ukrainian FinTech startup that is providing a neobanking solution to people across the country. It is Ukraine's first digital only bank, not having physical branches around the country. It allows you to make use of crypto to store, transfer and grow your funds in a convenient way. The decentralised platform makes everything about Monobank transparent and decentralised, which also helps to improve the overall security of your money. Monobank is one of the greatest examples of crypto banking, globally.
Despite the rapid growth and innovative nature of Monobank, it has not yet seen the need to secure external investment to achieve its growth goals. In fact, during 2021, prior to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Monobank was said to be valued at more than $1 Billion according to its founders.
15. Clover Dynamics
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Lviv, Ukraine
Size: 51-100
Founders: Mykola Kozak
Clover Dynamics is the startup helping startups. Founded in 2020, it is a tech development house that supports startups and scaleups with developing the technology infrastructure for their platforms. Its team of experienced and carefully vetted engineers have worked on a range of projects, including AI-powered search tools, cryptocurrency-based data centres, sales browser extensions and much more. Whatever the nature of your tech, they can support it.
There is currently no information to suggest that Clover Dynamics has received external investment. As a result of this, it can be assumed that Clover Dynamics success has been down to the strong commercials of its operations and the expertise of its founding team that have bootstrapped it since launch.
16. Foodex24
Year Founded: 2020
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 101-250
Founders: Vladyslav Savchenko
Foodex24 is a Ukrainian startup that was founded in 2020 and is currently headquartered in Kyiv. It provides a unique marketplace where users in Ukraine and Poland can select from more than 7500 household and food products at competitive prices. It carries the most popular brands from both of these countries and also includes options to allow your shopping to be delivered directly to your home. This saves you hours of waiting in line and trying to manually find your favourite products.
Foodex24 has grown at a rapid rate since it was founded and this can be partly attributed to its success in raising startup funding. Its last funding round took place in March 2021, when it raised $800,000. This investment was used to scale up its operations and increase the selection of products that it can offer to its customers on the platform.
17. Aurora Labs
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 11-50
Founders: Zohar Fox, Ori Lederman
Aurora Labs is a startup in Ukraine that has developed the next generation of Ethereum compatible blockchain. The chain itself and the accompanying ecosystem are run on the Near Protocol and allows for the technical innovations of the Aurora Cloud, which allows Web 2 businesses to begin taking advantage of the benefits of Web 3. This includes the average block time of a single second, transaction finality in two seconds and a mere cost of $0.02 per transaction, which is much less than other blockchains are capable of offering.
Aurora Labs has required startup funding to achieve its current level of success. The most recent of these rounds took place in October 2021, when it raised $12 Million. This funding significantly accelerated the rate at which Aurora could develop its Ethereum-compatible blockchain and improve its internal talent through extensive hiring.
18. Mint Innovations
Year Founded: 2018
HQ: Lutsk, Ukraine
Size: 51-100
Founders: Sergiy Karpyuk
Mint Innovations is a startup in Ukraine that develops a range of hardware and software solutions for clients across a wide range of industry sectors. For example, it has developed smart locker software, POS systems for a range of businesses, the software for self-checkout systems and vending machines across many more. All of its products conform to the highest quality and safety standards, such as ISO 9001 and more.
Building up the internal talent and structure to develop the wide range of software tools that it does would normally require significant investment. It is therefore, impressive to see that the founder, Mr. Karpyuk has successfully bootstrapped Mint Innovations to the point where it has achieved great growth, without the need for raising outside investment.
19. Everstake
Year Founded: 2017
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 101-250
Founders: Sergey Vasylchuk
Everstake is a startup in Ukraine that operates in the blockchain market. It is creating Ukraine's premium blockchain development solution. Its expert team is capable of developing the entire blockchain and smart contract infrastructure for your project. Additionally, it gives you the opportunity as an institution or individual to stake on Everstake and receive the best rewards on the market for doing so. It has already staked more than $4 Billion of assets with its customers.
Due to the nature of the business model, Everstake has not ever had to raise external investment in order to reach its growth goals. This is due to the money it earns from its customers staking and the other development services that it provides. This makes the extent of the success achieved by Everstake even more impressive.
20. Stroom Network
Year Founded: 2021
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Size: 1-10
Founders: Rostyslav Shvets, Slava Zhygulin
Stroom Network is a startup in Ukraine that was founded in 2021 and is currently headquartered in Kyiv. It has developed a staking platform for cryptocurrency that is based on being easy to use and understand for its customers, as well as providing a lot of value to its customers. Its DAO connects the Bitcoin Lightning Network with other EVM-based blockchains such as Ethereum. This enables faster staking with much fewer difficulties in the long run.
Stroom has recently identified a problem that it wishes to use external funding to solve. During its August 2023 funding round, it raised $3.5 Million to solve the challenges of liquidity on Lightning Network. These funds have been used to expand the internal team so that a solution to these challenges can be effectively developed.
21. Snovio
Year Founded: 2017
HQ: New York, USA
Size: 11-50
Founders: Oleksii Kratko
Snovio is a Ukrainian startup that was founded in 2017, initially in Ukraine that is now headquartered in New York due to the impact of the war. It provides sales automation and acceleration solutions that allow you to generate more leads through its contact and contact details tracing for emails and LinkedIn. Once you've identified your prospect, you can automate your outreach to these prospects and set up an effective email campaign to close these prospects. All of the data you generate can also be easily stored in Snovio's built-in CRM.
Snovio's first and only funding round came to fruition shortly after it was founded in December 2017. This funding round took the form of an Initial Coin Offering, whereby Snovio raised $2.1 Million. This ICO helped Snovio to start appearing on exchanges across the globe and provided essential funding for building Snovio's team.
FAQs
What Are The Strongest Startup Industries In Ukraine?
The strongest startup industries in Ukraine are Blockchain & Cryptocurrency, Sales & Marketing and AI.
What Is The Ukraine Startup Ecosystem Currently Worth?
It is estimated that the Ukrainian startup ecosystem is worth 23.3 Billion Euros, which is especially impressive in the current circumstances.
How Many Startups Are There In Ukraine?
It is estimated that there are currently more than 2000 tech startups currently operating in Ukraine.
