Ukrainian defense tech company Buntar Aerospace has raised ~€14.3 million ($16 million) in a new funding round led by Freedom Fund and an undisclosed international private equity fund. Gardar Venture Capital, Iron Wolf Capital and Autonomy Capital also joined the round, which brings the company's total funding to $30 million.
Buntar Aerospace makes the Buntar-3 reconnaissance drone and Buntar Copilot, software that helps drone operators plan and run combat missions. Both are already used by frontline units across Ukraine, and bring the company stable revenue. The new money will go into R&D, more production capacity and hiring experienced engineers and managers. Buntar also plans to take dual-use versions of its technology to international markets and to expand its defense work into counter-drone capabilities and precision-strike support.
This is the company's second large round this year. In March, US security technology company Axon Enterprise led a €14.3 million round in Buntar, with Norwegian investment consortium Munkene AS also taking part, and the two companies started working together on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) technology. At the time, co-founder Bohdan Sas said the funding would “help us scale systems that give operators information as early as possible and help save lives at the most critical moments.”
Inside Buntar’s drone and mission-control technology
Buntar-3 was unveiled in May 2025. It is an electric drone that takes off vertically, can stay in the air for up to four hours and navigates without satellite signals, which is important on a front where GPS and radio links are jammed all the time. Copilot plans each mission around battery life, weather, altitude and connection stability, predicts when a drone needs to return and works out when the next one should take off, so units keep watching an area without gaps. In March 2026, Militarnyi reported that a Buntar-3 had guided a missile strike on a Shahed storage site at Donetsk airport.
The company was founded in the summer of 2023 by Ivan Kaunov, Kateryna Bezsudna and Bohdan Sas. Kaunov, who previously co-founded the Ukrainian fintech Finmap, joined the army in April 2022 and served as an infantryman. Bezsudna worked at Brave1, Ukraine's state defence tech cluster, and that is where the two met while testing drones, according to AIN. The team decided early on to design its own aircraft and software.
Among Buntar's early backers were Brave1, which gave the company a $25,000 grant, and the co-founders of Ukrainian ride-hailing company Uklon, who invested $200,000 in 2024.
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