Ukrainian defense technology companies are developing artificial intelligence software that allows groups of drones and other unmanned systems to coordinate on the battlefield with less direct human control, a shift that is reshaping how the country fights and drawing attention from militaries and investors worldwide.
Swarmer, a Kyiv-based company founded in early 2023, builds AI that enables different unmanned systems to share battlefield information and divide tasks among themselves. Human operators still set the mission and its constraints, but the software handles coordination, route selection, and decisions about which drone should take on which task. The company's CEO and cofounder, Serhii Kupriienko, previously led artificial intelligence teams for Amazon's Ring division in Ukraine before Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Kupriienko conceived the idea as Ukraine's drone warfare program was still taking shape. Small first-person view drones had begun spreading across the front lines but had not yet become the dominant weapon they are today. Drones accounted for less than 10 percent of battlefield casualties in 2022; by 2025, that figure had risen to as much as 80 percent. Kupriienko saw both a shortage and an opportunity: Ukraine was using more drones but still relied heavily on humans to fly and coordinate them. He also had a personal motivation, with three children living in Kyiv, and wanted to build a system he could trust to protect them.
He reached out to Alex Fink, an American businessman he had known for over a decade, initially seeking advice on turning the concept into a company. After Fink sent him a five-page plan, Kupriienko suggested they build it together. Swarmer's software can be integrated with various unmanned systems, and it must evolve with conditions at the front.
The company's creation and integration into the Ukrainian military tracks the broader progression of the conflict. When war broke out in 2022, Russian armored columns pushed toward Kyiv, and much of the world expected Ukraine to surrender quickly. Ukrainian forces instead repelled the assault on the capital and later retook large stretches of territory in the Kharkiv region and the southern city of Kherson. But the fighting soon developed into a grinding contest that favored Russia's deeper reserves of troops and ammunition. By early 2024, Russian forces were at times firing as many as 10 artillery shells for every Ukrainian one, while a delay in U.S. aid helped produce what Ukrainian soldiers called shell hunger.
Drones helped Ukraine compensate, largely through cheap first-person view models that acted as both scouts and armaments. What started with imported drones from China, Turkey, and the United States quickly grew into a thriving domestic industry. By late 2024, Ukraine could manufacture roughly 1.5 million unmanned aerial vehicles a year. Russia adapted by blanketing parts of the front with electronic warfare that could jam GPS and sever the radio links connecting drones to their pilots. That accelerated the Ukrainian military's push toward AI, as developers began using machine vision and other autonomous systems to help drones recognize and track targets and steer without GPS or communications.
Ukraine's experiments in autonomy are feeding a much larger race to develop autonomous weapons. U.S. investors, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Palantir CEO Alex Karp, are pouring money into Ukrainian defense tech. The Pentagon, which saw conventional U.S. troops beaten handily by Ukrainian drones in a recent war game, has requested more than $54 billion for its Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, charged with rapidly testing and integrating autonomous systems. Russia has likely already fielded a fully autonomous strike drone, while China is testing AI-enabled drones, swarms, and loyal wingmen that still generally require substantial human input.
Against that backdrop, Ukraine's AI strategy has become increasingly relevant far beyond its borders, drawing foreign investors and arms makers not only to support the war effort but to study a defense industry being remade under the strain of combat. Ukraine and Russia are often cast as David and Goliath. Another analogy may be more apt: a scrappy startup competing against a corporate behemoth, trying to make up for what it lacks in scale through speed and iteration, even as the technology raises thorny moral questions.