A soldier launches a drone during a press trip to demonstrate the integration of AI into the process of humanitarian demining, Zhytomyr region, Northern Ukraine.
Future publication via Getty Images
The war in Ukraine has shown how cheap drones can reshape the battlefield, increasing demand for faster, cheaper ways to engage targets and defeat incoming attacks at scale. With growing concerns that massive drone strikes could overwhelm traditional air defenses, companies like Swarmer are drawing attention to AI systems that have already been tested in the fight against Russia.
Bloomberg reported on March 20 that shares of Swarmer Inc. rose nearly 1,000% in the first three trading sessions after the IPO. That made it one of the most eye-catching recent debuts in defense technology. But the bigger story isn’t just the rise in stock prices. Swarmer is building drone autonomy software at a time when investors and defense planners are paying more attention to military AI and proven technology from Ukraine.
Deborah Fairlamb, founder of Green Flag Ventures and investor in Swarmer, told me in an interview that the company’s U.S. listing reflects its legal structure rather than a change in identity. “In legal and capital market terms, it is now a US-listed company,” she said. “However, in terms of identity and operational DNA, it is still widely considered to have Ukrainian roots, as its technical basis and combat validation come from Ukraine.”
Swarmer is based in Austin, Texas, but his roots and combat experience come from Ukraine. That gives the company unusual credibility at a time when recent reports indicate that Ukrainian specialists are already helping Middle Eastern countries counter Iranian drones. Reuters reported on March 20 that Ukraine had sent 228 drone interception specialists to five countries in the region.
In a September 2025 company announcement, it said it had raised $15 million in a Series A round led by US investors. The company said its software enables groups of drones to independently carry out missions by converting human instructions into coordinated action.
According to that same announcement, Swarmer’s systems are built on data from more than 82,000 combat missions. The company also said the software runs on multiple hardware platforms rather than being tied to a single drone. This matters because in modern drone warfare, much of the value can come from both software and hardware.
The company did not respond to a request for comment on its future plans after the IPO.
The Wall Street Journal reported in November 2025 that foreign investment in Ukrainian drone manufacturers and defense technology startups had increased. Investors were looking for proven technology and growing military demand.
The Journal said Swarmer, which started in 2023, makes AI software used by Ukraine to coordinate drone swarm attacks on Russian positions. It also reported that the company planned to use new financing to open offices in Warsaw and Austin.
Treston Wheat, head of geopolitics at Insight Forward, told me that Ukraine’s experiences have also made the country a testing ground for unmanned systems. “Ukraine has become the world’s most active laboratory for the fight against drones in the past two years,” he said. Wheat added that many of these methods have only recently been tested on a large scale and that they work in real-world conditions. That, he said, is one of the reasons why outside interest in Ukrainian defense technology is growing.
Russian jamming is intense across much of the front, making radio-controlled drones harder to use in some of the war’s most contested areas. Bryan Pickens, a former U.S. Army Green Beret who fought alongside Ukrainian special forces, told me that the circumstances around Pokrovsk show why that matters.
“In places like Pokrovsk, that’s absolutely the case. GPS doesn’t work. Radio doesn’t work. Switchblade 600s are ineffective. Most Western systems fail,” he said. In that environment, he added, “Anything radio-controlled is largely obsolete. Autonomous systems or SATCOM-capable systems are the future.”
Jonathan Lippert, president of Defense Tech for Ukraine, told me that Swarmer also appears to be preparing for U.S. government defense contracts. He said the company’s choice of Erik Prince as chairman could help the company gain greater access to Washington and to the broader defense world. Lippert added that a U.S. listing should also make it easier for Swarmer to raise more money through equity or debt offerings in the future, because U.S. public markets offer a larger pool of investors.
Fairlamb said investors should not take the early share rise as evidence that the company is already fully established. “The increase says more about demand, the strength of the story and a relatively tight float than it does about a fully proven business, especially as Swarmer is still early in its revenue cycle and remains loss-making,” she said.
That leaves a bigger question about what Swarmer becomes next. Fedir Martynov, a partner at Trident Forward, a consultancy with offices in Ukraine and the United States, told me that the company will likely follow its strongest path as a software company rather than a drone maker.
“The strongest path for them is probably as an autonomy and software layer rather than as a traditional drone manufacturer,” he said. If Swarmer can parlay its battlefield credibility into repeat Western contracts and diversify beyond a highly concentrated early customer base, he added, it could become a meaningful player in defense software. If not, there is a risk that it will remain a high-profile, but still immature, publicly traded company.
Swarmer’s debut could be an early sign that investors now view Ukrainian defense technology as a serious sector with long-term export and commercial potential. Mark Savchuk, advocacy manager at the Ukrainian NGO PR Army, told me that Swarmer’s mention likely won’t be the last. “What we all know for sure, however, is that there will be more IPOs in the future,” he said.
That may make Swarmer less of an outlier than an early example of where defense investments are heading, especially as the conflict involving Iran increases demand for the kind of cheap, asymmetric drone defense systems that Ukraine has been forced to develop.
