Ukrainian Venture Capital in 2025: Capital Concentration, Defence Focus, and a Stress Test for the Ecosystem

For the Ukrainian venture market, 2025 was anything but smooth—and that is its defining feature. It was not a year of steady “quarter-to-quarter” growth, nor a year of widespread records. Instead, it was a year of sharp contrasts: a weak start, one exceptionally powerful peak, followed by a gradual return to a functional—though tense—stability.

Aggregated deal statistics allow 2025 to be seen not as a collection of isolated news items, but as a coherent process—with its own narrative arc, structural imbalances, and clear signals for investors and founders heading into 2026.

The Year as a Whole: Big Numbers, but One Key “Node”

By the end of 2025, the publicly disclosed volume of venture investments in Ukrainian startups amounted to $526 million. At first glance, this appears to be a strong result. However, the internal structure of this figure is atypical: more than three quarters of the annual volume came from a single quarter.

This is a critical point for correctly interpreting the statistics. 2025 was not a year of a “broad-based venture boom.” Instead, it became a year of concentrated capital, where the emergence of one or several large rounds was enough to reshape the picture of the entire year.

Ukrainian Startup Investment Deals in 2025

Q1 2025: Starting from a Minimal Base and the “Silence” Effect

The beginning of 2025 was extremely restrained. Between January and March, Ukrainian startups publicly raised around $9 million. For a market that had demonstrated significantly higher quarterly volumes in previous years, this looked like stagnation.

However, this quarter reflected not a halt in the ecosystem, but rather a shift in financing formats. A significant share of deals remained undisclosed, taking the form of bridge rounds or internal arrangements with existing investors. Funds and angels focused on preserving runway for portfolio companies rather than making large new bets.

Q1 became a phase of “waiting”—and this very waiting directly laid the groundwork for the events of spring.

Q2 2025: $420 Million and the Moment That Defined the Entire Year

The second quarter became a turning point. From April to June, the total volume of publicly disclosed venture deals surged to $420 million, radically changing perceptions of the year as a whole.

Yet it is important to understand the nature of this spike. It was not driven by a mass inflow of capital into dozens of startups, but by a high concentration of capital in a small number of large cases. These deals formed the “body” of the annual statistics.

From an analytical standpoint, Q2 2025 illustrates how the Ukrainian venture market operates in wartime conditions: large capital enters less frequently, but when it does, it does so quickly and at scale. For international investors, this serves as a signal that the ecosystem is capable of executing complex transactions even in an unstable environment.

Q3 2025: Record Number of Rounds and a Defence-Startup Focus

After the “peak” of Q2, the market did not collapse into a vacuum. On the contrary, Q3 became a record quarter by number of deals: 34 venture rounds were recorded—the highest quarterly figure of the year.

In terms of value, this amounted to around $44 million, significantly less than in Q2, but with a fundamentally different structure. Capital was distributed among a larger number of companies, while the largest round of the quarter—$15 million—went to a defence technology startup.

It was during the summer that the defence/miltech focus clearly emerged as a key trend in Ukrainian venture capital. Startups related to security, drones, defence software solutions, and dual-use technologies became the primary recipients of investor attention.

This quarter demonstrated that the market was beginning to “expand horizontally”—not through mega-rounds, but through sustained, systematic activity.

Q4 2025: Stabilisation Instead of Spectacle

The end of the year passed without headline-grabbing sensations, but with noticeable stability. In October–December 2025, startups raised $62.7 million across 22 deals.

This was neither a record nor a failure. On the contrary, Q4 looks like a healthy operating mode: moderate ticket sizes, clear investment logic, and the closing of deals that had been prepared throughout the year.

For investors, this signalled that after peaks and distortions, the market is capable of returning to predictability. For founders, it showed that fundraising in 2025 was possible not only in an “ideal moment,” but also during periods of restrained interest.

Three Key Takeaways from 2025

First, 2025 was a year of concentration, not mass activity.
On the surface, the numbers look strong, but they rely heavily on a limited number of large deals.

Second, the defence sector firmly established itself as the core of Ukrainian venture capital.
In the second half of the year, defence and dual-use startups became systematic recipients of capital.

Third, the ecosystem proved its resilience.
Even without “constant records,” the market maintained deal flow, round activity, and investor interest.

What 2025 Means for 2026

2025 was not a year of euphoria, but it was a year of structural testing. Ukrainian venture capital entered 2026 as a smaller, more cautious, yet significantly more mature market—with clear priorities, realistic valuations, and a focus on applied technologies.

For investors, this means less noise and greater selectivity. For startups, it means the need to build businesses capable of surviving long cycles without constant access to cheap capital.

And in this sense, 2025 can be described not as a crisis year, but as a formative one.