Ukraine-Founded Drone Maker UForce Hits £4.5bn Valuation With UK Government Money and NATO Board Members

A Ukrainian-founded, London-based naval drone company raises £500m — £113m from UK public funds — while stacking its board with ex-NATO commanders and former defence secretaries. The defence-tech gold rush now has a price tag.

UForce, a London-based military drone manufacturer founded by Ukrainian entrepreneur Oleg Rogynskyy, has reached a £4.5bn valuation after closing a £500m-plus funding round. The UK's national wealth fund contributed £113m of public money. The company makes land, air, and sea drones that have seen extensive use in Ukraine's war against Russia.

The board tells you everything about the strategic positioning. Christopher Cavoli, NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe until last year, joins via lead investor Valor Equity Partners — the PE firm founded by Antonio Gracias, a former Tesla board director who also sits on SpaceX's board. Former Conservative defence secretary Ben Wallace is already on the board. The Musk-adjacent capital and the NATO-adjacent governance are not coincidental — this is a company built to sit at the intersection of Silicon Valley venture capital and Western military procurement. The UK Ministry of Defence is clearly the strategic buyer being cultivated. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting met Rogynskyy aboard HMS Prince of Wales in Oslo, then remotely piloted a UForce vessel 1,500 miles away near Portugal — a live demonstration staged for maximum procurement optics. The MoD flagged UForce's maritime capabilities specifically, citing Russia's shadow fleet operations against North Sea cables and pipelines, and the UK's planned drone fleet to track Russian nuclear submarines. The supply chain commitments matter. UForce has pledged that more than 70% of UK-built boat content will come from British suppliers — hulls, engines, electronics, and fit-out sourced domestically. This is the industrial policy carrot that justified the public investment: not just buying drones, but building a domestic defence-tech manufacturing base. Rogynskyy's trajectory from Dnipro to Silicon Valley to defence tech is the archetype of the current moment. His previous company, People.ai, was a data analytics unicorn. The pivot to military drones reflects a broader pattern: tech founders with Ukrainian roots channelling venture-capital mechanics into defence production, arguing that software-era iteration speed is the decisive advantage in modern warfare. Streeting's framing was notably candid: 'The UK has gone from training Ukraine to being trained by Ukraine.' That admission — that a country with one of the world's largest defence budgets now considers itself a student of Ukrainian drone warfare — is the real signal. The £113m public investment is a bet that battle-tested Ukrainian innovation, routed through London incorporation and British supply chains, can upgrade UK naval defence faster than legacy contractors. The risk is the familiar one with defence-tech unicorns: valuations built on geopolitical urgency can deflate when urgency fades or procurement cycles stall. At £4.5bn, UForce is being priced on the assumption that Western governments will continue accelerating drone spending indefinitely. If the Ukraine war ends or defence budgets tighten, the valuation thesis collapses. For now, every NATO government is a potential customer, and UForce has positioned itself — board, capital, supply chain — to capture that demand.