🎉Happy Birthday, Eric!🎉
May you continue to enjoy great health so you can go on many more adventures in Ukraine, especially after victory. The best is yet to come! We are very grateful for your genuine and strong desire to see us succeed in this journey to save Ukraine's democracy. Our gift to you is coming this week as we release our 2023 impact report. Stay tuned!
We brought Ukraine to the London Defense Tech Hackathon this past week. The event took place at the legendary Armoury House. We collaborated closely with the organizers Future Forces and Apollo Defense to define problem statements that reflect Ukraine's needs. Drone operators and pilots from the Ukrainian Armed Forces were physically at the event for consultation. Anton also arranged for an online mentorship session with experts from the MoD and military units. This level of global engagement of fresh talent into the defense needs of Ukraine goes a long way. We are planting these seeds that will generate much interest in developing solutions that are augmenting what can be done locally. The Ukrainian miltech ecosystem, despite growing stronger every day and surprising the world with increased capabilities, still has some significant blind spots that require working with top talent from across several engineering hubs. The hackathon in El Segundo had better talent, sourced from Stanford, Yale, MIT, and other prominent schools. But the London hackathon was nonetheless useful considering the UK and EU have many task forces funding innovation deployable to Ukraine.
#1 Home-on-jam solution to target and neutralize EW sources on the enemy's side
#2 Orlan interceptor to take down this Russian ISR drone which is pervasive on the frontline
#3 Geospatial Data Processing for training of AI models on drones that use autonomous navigation
Ukraine currently doesn't have any of the solutions above so we encouraged the teams to pursue development until deployment and commercialization. Several teams reached out after the hackathon to ask for a soft-landing in Ukraine, which we are happy to provide. Here is the backstage video.
I leveraged the trip there to meet with NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), UK government, other VCs such as Lakestar, Accel and IQ Capital, startups, and cyber experts. I spoke at an investor event as well. It was very clear from all conversations that with D3 being so close to the frontline, we have very valuable information to share with all these people and they asked many questions.
London Defense Tech Hackathon (opening)
London Defense Tech Hackathon (hacking)
London Defense Tech Hackathon (judging panel)
London Defense Tech Hackathon (winner)
Total = 379 (+18)
We are extending the scout program investment offer to Guardian, from Georgetown University, so they can start their work on the series of EW solutions, including UAV countermeasures with low-cost, high-efficiency and AI-powered RF detection and jamming. They plan to work on a “precision” jammer that (1) analyses RF spectrum to detect, classify and locate drones, (2) “picks the lock” on control frequencies and protocols, and (3) performs directional jamming of target frequencies and protocols. As a reminder, we are allocating $500K to this scout program for ideation stage companies. Here is the investment case, pdf attached.
Guardian RF - Investment Case.pdf