Jun 30, 2021

R&D and new offices in Ukraine U.S-based IT company CognitOps, a provider of artificial intelligence-based warehouse applications, announced the opening of a software development center in Kyiv  after raising $ 11 million within the Series A funding round – read Ericsson Ukraine has launched the first in Ukraine demo center of the corporate networks 4G/5G based in the company’s office in Kyiv to demonstrate scenarios for the use of fifth-generation mobile networks for the digitalization of various industries – read Lviv-based SoftServe, a tech company with 38 offices in 9 countries, will build a high-tech ‘campus’ on an extensive 13-hectare site of a former prison in a southern part of Lviv city – read UDP developers are moving ahead with three ‘IT cities’ – in Lviv, Kharkiv and Kyiv, said the company vice president, Vitaliy Melnyk. In September, the company will open its 18,000 square meter ‘business campus’ at LvivTech.City. With a total planned buildout of 110,000 square meters, the company plans to start residential construction this fall – read Venture capital and startups: Ukrainian wooden crafts company Enjoy the Wood raised $816,894 by 3,474 backers with the $5,000 goal for The First 3D Luminous Colored Wooden World Map at Kickstarter – read Ukrainian SpaceTech startup Promin Aerospace raised $500 000 from the VC fund QPDigital. The company plans to create “the smallest orbital rocket in the history of humankind.” – read The Ukrainian startup memoryOS, an app to improve and train memory in a gamified way, has raised over $350,000 on Kickstarter, backed by 1,593, reaching its initial goal 30 times over – read Ukrainian fruits and vegetable delivery service OVO raised $350 000 in a seed round at a pre-money valuation of €3 million led by TA Ventures, and the ICLUB private investors club, and Imperia Holding invested in this round – read Ukrainian Startup Fund announced 6 winners of 25th Pitch Days. Startups that received pre-seed grants ($25000): CASERS, Zirity, 12Climb, elKYC, craftit.online, Re:zume – read Ukrainian DevOps platform GitLab announced the acquisition of UnReview, a machine learning-based tool that helps software teams recommend the best reviewers for when developers want to check in their latest code. The financial details of the deal are not disclosed – read Ukrainian nect WORLD partners with Britain’s industry-leading company Truphone. According to the agreement, Truphone brings eSIM technology to the nect MODEM using built-in M2M eSIM chips and Truphone’s connectivity solution: Truphone Connect – read A digital-native technology services provider Grid Dynamics with offices in Ukraine (Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Dnipro) has acquired Tacit Knowledge, a Pitney Bowes-owned company, a global consultancy focused on digital commerce – read Ukrainian startup FINMAP.online, financial analytics and accounting for small and medium businesses, raised an undisclosed amount from EU and Ukrainian investors: Startup Wise Guys, BRISE Capital, Sigma Software Labs, Inspirium, and others. – read Startup Thepick that creates a social network to search for music through recommendations won the Music Tech Weekend hackathon. In addition to the $3,000 prize, the team received a free acceleration in Sector X and a place in the NEST startup space – read Noosphere announced the winners of the engineering startup contest Vernadsky Challenge 2021 at Aviasvit XXI: MediScent, Spain; Provizio, Ukraine; BOROSPACE, the Slovak Republic – read Ecosystem news: Winners of the Ukrainian Startup Awards 2020 by Lift99: Delfast Bikes, Preply, Reface, VC QPDigital,  Mate academy, Bolt, Yurii Zaremba, co-founder and CEO of AXDRAFT, Alyona Mysko, CEO and founder of fuelfinance, Restream cofounders – read Rating of 25 women in Ukrainian IT by Forbes Ukraine: Hanna Shuvalova (PAWA), Sofi Shvets (Let’s Enhance), Margaret Rimek (Pix), Tanya Chaykovskaya (LIFT99co), Anastacia Pavlyshyna, Alona Mysko ( fuelfinance), Sofia Vyshnevska (Propertymate), Margarita Sivakova (Legal Nodes) and others – read Rating of the people who move forward Ukrainian tech ecosystem in business, government, and society 100 TechDrivers by bit.ua announced winners: Government_Tech – Aleksey Vyskub, Ministry of Digital Transformation; Tech_World – Mykhaylo Buravkov, СЕО of ByOwls, Inc.; Tech_Business – Yegor Walowski, cofounder of Fintellect; Tech_Person – Nataliya Nakonechna, СЕО of KickYour.Tech; and special prize went to Alissa Ban’kovskaya, Lead at TechUkraine & USF – read Ukrainians received about $400 million in profit from bitcoin investments, ranking 10th highest in the world, according to the Digital Transformation Ministry, citing a study by Chainanalysis. The top three were: US – $4.1 billion; China – $1.1 billion; and Japan – $900 million. Six months ago, the Rada approved on first reading a bill, ‘On Virtual Assets,’ which would provide legislative regulation of a market for crypto-assets – read StartupBlink represented the Global Startup Ecosystem Index Report 2021 that ranks 1,000 cities and 100 countries where Ukraine is 34th (29th in 2020), Kyiv – 48th (decreasing by 16 spots), Lviv has jumped an impressive 99 spots to 255th globally – read Reface investor and founder of Pawa Sergey Tokarev announced launching a new Computer Science University in Ukraine together with the Kyiv School of Economics – read Lviv Emergency Hospital used virtual reality to save a 12-year-old girl with an innate heart defect – read  Ukrainian delivery service Rocket is scaling up in the EU and launching 2 new spots – in Greece, Athene, and in France, Lille. Last year the company announced a rebranding for going global and has started the EU expansion from Nikosia, Cyprus (already available Limassol), and Amsterdam, Netherlands. – read Ukrainian marketplace Rozetka, founded by Vladyslav Chechyotkin, plans to launch in Uzbekistan. The company has already registered the trademark ROZETKA LIMITED in the country. In 2020, delivery service Zakaz.ua has started operation in Tashkent, Uzbekistan – read Ukrainian startup Apostera invented unique Mixed Reality technology that was recently introduced in the all-electric Audi Q4 e-tron and Audi Q4 e-tron: Sportback – read Ukrainian startup Mosqitter, a smart and eco-friendly hardware solution to protect people from mosquitoes and mosquito-borne diseases without using pesticides or insecticides, won 1st place at SelectUSA Investment Summit competition – read Ukrainian Cardiomo was awarded as the Best Biometrics Innovation in Healthcare by Juniper Research, a think tank for digital technology markets – read Ukrainian WeSoftYou is now a multi-award-winning team as the fastest-growing company in the world by Clutch, a data-driven research platform that is widely respected in the B2B scene – read Volodymyr Usov, a former Chairman of the State Space Agency of Ukraine, who previously developed Kwambio and Gutenbergz startups, introduced a new project — the ACE One combat drone. Former president of Antonov subsidiary Alexander Los became chief designer and head of the board of directors of the developer Air Combat Evolution – read Dmytro Dubilet and Alex Lissitsa launched the online marketplace of land Dobrozem that will help buyers after the opening of the land market in Ukraine, on July 1, 2021. Also, the startup provides additional services such as estimation of land, compliance for purchase and sale agreements – read NGO Ukrainian Clusters presents the list of 22 IT clusters operating In Ukraine in 2021. Among the key – Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhya and others – read Ukrainian Yuzhnoye State Design Office has agreed upon the launch services of spacecraft SICH-2-1 with the Dutch SpaceTech company ISILAUNCH as a part of SpaceX’s cluster mission aboard the Falcon-9 in December 2021 – read The Ukrainian-Belorussian team launched the new media of tech in Ukraine – dev.ua. The media project will produce exclusive stories of tech, innovations, inventions in Ukraine and abroad, and their impact on society. The portal is in Ukrainian and Russian – read UK fintech startup Revolut launched money transfers to Ukraine. The service informs about the possibility to send money to Ukraine in more than 30 currencies – read The article by KyivPost is about the tech industry that transforms Ukraine, attracting new talent with decent pay: key figures and dynamic – read  Interview MacPaw Founder & CEO Oleksandr Kosovan for “The first people” podcast is about the future of the Ukrainian tech industry, estimation of MacPaw and competing with Apple – read Ajax Systems equipped the Vernadsky Research Base, a Ukrainian Antarctic Station, with a security system featuring FireProtect and FireProtect Plus fire detectors that protect against fire, detect smoke, and rapid temperature swings, and prevent carbon monoxide poisoning – read How Ukrainian startup Liki24.com,the service delivers thousands of medicines per day and has a novel for the market approach to logistics, disrupt conservative pharma, deliver medical products – read Government news The Verkhovna Rada has passed at the first reading bill No. 5376 on amendments to the Tax Code of Ukraine regarding the stimulation of the development of the digital economy in Ukraine, which regulates the tax conditions of the special legal regime Diia City. The bill introduces a special taxation regime for companies-residents of Diia City and the income of their employees, including gig specialists. The document, in particular, gives Diia City residents the opportunity to choose between paying income tax (18%) and tax on withdrawn capital at a rate of 9% – read Ukraine’s parliament passed a bill on June 3 that imposes additional taxes on foreign companies like Apple, Netflix, Amazon and Facebook, according to Danil Getmantsev, head of the parliament’s committee on finance, taxation and customs policy. The bill said that foreign tech companies that are not registered in Ukraine will pay a 20% value-added tax, or VAT, for digital services they provide to local users – read President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented the concept of the Presidential University in Kyiv during the Forum “Ukraine 30. Education and Science”. The Ministry of Digital Transformation supports the President’s initiative to create a new modern university. The team of the Ministry of Digital Transformation will work on the educational direction “Information Technology, Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence” – read UAmachinery & UAcreativeindustries project How Pangram by X-Platform helps to develop creative industry in Ukraine and worldwide – read How Kharkiv-based Radmirtech’s products enhancing productivity and keeping people healthy – read How Kharkiv-based Academy Smart helps Israeli Cloudyn to enhance the code coverage up to 80% – read How Everscan helps enterprises and cultural heritage to create extremely accurate models for further development – read Ukrainian visual-centered studio Areyes produced futuristic Posthuman Island – read Computational and algorithmic architecture by Dmytro Aranchii Architects – read Tech solutions for publishing industry enhancing reading experience – read How the global leader based in Kyiv SHERP develops and manufactures the utility terrain vehicles with no analogs in the world in terms of their capabilities and characteristics – read How Ukrainian PET Technologies manufactures advanced blow molder machines for global corporations – read What kind of traffic control equipment that save people lives produce Chernigiv-based ATILOS – read How Dnipro-based ALT Ukraine manufactures world-class 3D metal printers – read Reports:  Visualizing Tech Giants’ Billion-Dollar Acquisitions – read Global Startup Ecosystem Index Report 2021 by StartupBlink – read Boxes, trucks and bikes by Benedict Evans – read The Top Trends in Tech by McKinsey – read Via TechUkraine, KyivPost, Vector, AIN, Liga, Retailers