Dear Investors and Friends of D3,
Kyiv hosted the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference once again, which brought incredible people to town who understand this year’s theme: THE NECESSITY TO WIN.
Andrew and I went on the Freedom Run with Timothy Snyder for raising awareness around the hundreds of prisoners of war illegally held in enemy’s captivity.
Freedom Run: free prisoners of war
Total = 472 (+3)
We have extended an investment offer to Stridar, a US company based in Denver and working on UGVs. The two co-founders are Amazon robotics veterans in close collaboration with the Ukrainian MoD and the State Transport Special Service (demining operator under MoD). The team is currently in Ukraine conducting testing with a target product launch for November.
We had been looking for months for an UGV company to add to the portfolio and we finally found the one we believe can scale to the 70K units the AFU currently needs. Per our landscape analysis, we had interviewed 24 companies. Stridar addresses all our requirements: scalability, pricing, speed of iteration per AFU feedback, with a seasoned hardware and software engineering team.
During my recent trip to the command center of the 13th brigade in Kharkiv, the commander shared how UGVs of all kinds are now critical and they have not found any proper vendor yet. They have been experimenting successfully with robotic dogs from China that move ahead of infantry to intentionally neutralize mines or conduct ground surveillance.
Investment Case and Deck:
Fundraising