AI Nodus: Ukraine - Week of December 16, 2025
AI Nodus: Ukraine is a bi-weekly report tracking AI developments across Ukraine's government, defense, and technology sectors.
Key Developments:
Diia.AIContest winners approved for government app integration with grants and mentorship
Diia.Osvita expands with creative industries AI series and skill modules
AiDeliv launches AI logistics platform reducing China-to-US shipping costs
Sky Spy closes $1.6M pre-seed for autonomous SIGINT systems; Agent 001 battlefield-validated in Ukraine
FRACTAL launches "Digital Artem Borodatiuk" AI assistant: 708 conversations in first five days
Ukrainian AI workforce reaches 6,100 specialists with 17% growth
GOVERNMENT & DIGITAL SERVICES
Ministry of Digital Transformation Announces Diia.AIContest Winners: Three AI Services Approved for Integration
The Ministry of Digital Transformation, EPAM Ukraine, and WINWIN AI Center of Excellence completed the first Diia.AIContest hackathon, with 270 participants forming 25 teams and 10 advancing to the final round over three weeks. The winning teams - "The Role of LLMs is Overestimated", DiAI, and ShiftWave AI - each received $8,000 in grants and mentoring support from EPAM, with their solutions approved for integration into the Diia government services application. Winners developed an AI translator for official document notarization, a parking violation recording service using photo and geolocation, and an AI-powered legal document constructor.
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Diia.Osvita Expands AI Education with New Series on Creative Industries and Five Practical Skill Modules
Ukraine's Diia.Osvita platform launched "AI in Creative Industries," an eight-part educational series covering AI applications in marketing, communications, design, and production for creative professionals, alongside five new shorts addressing prompt engineering, the COSAR formula, hallucination prevention, and information verification. The platform now offers 17 AI-focused educational products including "Future AI Leaders" (for teens and educators) and "ChatGPT: Your Personal Assistant for Work, Study, and Life", with national research on digital and AI skills showing 50% of Ukrainian adults have made decisions based on AI interaction.
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STARTUP ECOSYSTEM & INVESTMENT
Ukrainian Entrepreneur Launches AI-Powered Logistics Platform AiDeliv
Vitaly Savryga, founder of logistics companies ARDI Logistics and ARDI Express, launched AiDeliv, the world's first AI-powered logistics exchange that enables small businesses and Amazon/eBay sellers to reduce shipping costs from China to the US by 15-60% through reverse-auction technology. During closed beta testing in summer and fall 2025, the platform processed $600,000 in shipments, using the Delivered Duty Paid model that includes all customs, taxes, and fees in the final pricing. The AI prescreens carriers based on route history, customs records, and ratings, while requiring $100,000 cargo insurance per shipment, with logistics providers competing in real-time reverse auctions where each bid must undercut the previous offer.
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Ukrainian-Founded Sky Spy Secures $1.6M Pre-Seed Funding for AI-Powered Autonomous SIGINT Systems
Ukrainian startup Sky Spy, which develops compact signals intelligence (SIGINT) systems for unmanned aerial vehicles, closed a $1.6 million pre-seed round led by Expeditions Fund and Superangel. The company's flagship product Agent 001 successfully completed battlefield validation in Ukraine, detecting and geolocating Russian RF emitters through real-time spectrum analysis. Agent 001 transforms small drones into autonomous spectrum reconnaissance devices weighing just over 500 grams, combining RF intelligence with visual confirmation via proprietary filtering algorithms and onboard signal processing, enabling immediate response without external computing resources.
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FRACTAL Launches Personalized AI Assistant "Digital Artem Borodatiuk" Trained on CEO's Knowledge Base
FRACTAL, an IT company group, unveiled a voice and text chatbot trained exclusively on 157 interviews, 49 articles and columns, and 1,504 pages from the upcoming management book "For Managers" by founder and CEO Artem Borodatiuk. The chatbot processes all responses through a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) knowledge base without generating answers from general AI knowledge, ensuring strict adherence to Borodatiuk's actual materials and thinking logic, with voice synthesis powered by ElevenLabs. In its first five days following the public launch last week, the assistant completed 708 conversations with 115 users, totaling nearly 10 hours of engagement.
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MARKET TRENDS & WORKFORCE
Ukrainian AI Talent Market Grows 17% in Two Years; 6,100 AI Specialists Now Working in Country
Ukraine's AI specialist workforce has reached 6,100 professionals, with 50% holding university degrees in relevant fields and 47% transitioning into the industry; one-third previously worked as developers. The majority of AI specialists work in product companies (41%), while 17% focus on defense technology, 13% implement AI solutions across agriculture, finance, and telecommunications sectors, and only 2% currently work in government - though demand is growing. Ukrainian AI professionals demonstrate a strong academic orientation, with 12% already holding PhDs and another 12% pursuing doctorates, while over 53% of surveyed IT community members believe Ukraine can achieve regional AI leadership..