UK drone maker founded by Ukrainians hits £4.5bn value after raising £500m

A London-based naval drone maker founded by Ukrainians has reached a £4.5bn valuation after it raised more than £500m from investors including the UK government.

UForce, which makes military drones for land, air and sea, received £113m from the UK’s national wealth fund. The investment makes UForce one of the UK’s fastest-growing unicorns – or startups with a valuation of more than $1bn. Its drones have been used extensively in the war in Ukraine.

The UK defence secretary, Wes Streeting, met UForce founder Oleg Rogynskyy on Thursday aboard the British aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales during a defence conference in Oslo, Norway.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence noted UForce’s maritime capabilities in particular, amid concerns over the increasing threat from Russia in the North Atlantic and North Sea. Russian naval vessels and its “shadow fleet” have been accused of sabotage and spying operations on cables and pipelines, while the UK is planning a fleet of sea-borne drones in the northern seas to track Russia’s nuclear submarine fleet.

Streeting on Thursday piloted a UForce MV7 uncrewed vessel which was located over 1,500 miles away in the Atlantic Ocean near Portugal.

Rogynskyy grew up in Dnipro, an industrial city in eastern Ukraine, before founding People.ai, a Silicon Valley tech unicorn focused on data on sales and operations performance for businesses.

Rogynskyy said UForce wanted to “make aggression unaffordable”. The investment would allow UForce to scale up production for Ukraine as well as for its allies, he added.

“The war in Ukraine has shown that in an increasingly volatile world, effective defence requires systems that can keep improving as threats change,” he said. “Governments and the technology ecosystem need to come together to develop cost-effective, interoperable, and autonomous platforms that are ready to fight now, and can evolve to meet future needs.”

The other lead investor was Valor Equity Partners, a private equity investor founded by Antonio Gracias, a former director of Tesla who is also on the board of Elon Musk’s rocket launch company, SpaceX. One of Valor’s partners is Christopher Cavoli, a retired US general who was Nato’s supreme allied commander for Europe until last year. Cavoli will join UForce’s board.

The Ministry of Defence said that UForce would invest in a British supply chain as part of the deal, with hulls, engines, electronics and fit-out sourced in the UK. The MoD said more than 70% of the content of each UK-built boat will come from British suppliers.

Streeting said: “Ukraine is rewriting the rules of warfare. In just a few years the UK has gone from training Ukraine to being trained by Ukraine, as they prove that who can innovate fastest is a key measure of modern military power.

“Bringing battle-tested expertise to the UK will create high-skilled jobs, spur innovation and strengthen our war-fighting readiness, enhancing our ability to deter our adversaries.”

Former Conservative UK defence secretary Ben Wallace is also on UForce’s board.