In 2021, Ukrainian funds entered the American market and invested in AI startups that offer innovative services. Michael Rumiantsau, Bohdan Hnatkovsky, Ruslan Tymofieiev (Ruslan Tymofeev), and other industry leaders speak about investment deals they made during the year.
Analytics platforms are in demand with B2B businesses. Narrative BI project from San Francisco attracted a $1.2 million investment from Digital Future and Adventures Lab. Funds saw the prospects of a no-code analytics platform useful for marketing and sales purposes. B2B businesses can use this service to get insights about company statistics to share them with a team and business partners.
Ruslan Tymofieiev (Ruslan Tymofeev) from Adventures Lab says that the decision in favor of Narrative BI has been taken according to the ambitions and personality of its founder: instead of caring only about huge immediate profits, he was focused on building a long-term business project.
Michael Rumiantsau, the Narrative BI founder, believes that advanced analytics is a key to success, and with the attracted investment, the project will launch a full-fledged version in the current year growing and strengthening businesses around the globe.
AI-based retail platform Outloud.ai appealed to Digital Future. The founder of Digital Future Alex Vitchenko explains that the startup technology will be useful for B2C businesses because it is focused on the automatization of voice communication with clients. The technology developed by the US/Ukrainian team is already used by Burger King and a few huge American companies and can be scaled to other markets successfully. Outloud.ai project has previously attracted financial support from Ukrainian Startup Fund and has participated in the Y Combinator program for technology startups.
Startups for the real estate markets based on AI algorithms attracted huge investments in 2021. Startup Propertymate with offices in the USA and Ukraine raised $1 million in funding from Pragmatech Ventures. The platform matches home builders with buyers and provides information about new residential constructions.
Bohdan Hnatkovsky, a co-founder of Propertymate, notices that despite the pandemic, US real estate marketing is growing rapidly. The startup raised the number of its clients 65 times compared to 2019. During the next half a year the project is going to open offices in Dallas and Houston in addition to New York and Austin.
Online notarization platform OneNotary attracted $1.75 million in investments from several funds in the USA and Ukraine in January 2022 (the negotiation process started in 2021). The platform that currently unites more than 10,000 notaries was founded by Ukrainian entrepreneur Ivan Zinkov. It allows clients to certify online different types of documents that can be necessary for real estate transactions, vehicle purchases, or the processing of educational contracts. This service became in high demand because of the pandemic restrictions and has been legalized in 39 states.
Among the Ukrainian venture funds that supported OneNotary, there were Adventures Lab, U.Ventures, and Digital Future. Ruslan Tymofieiev (Ruslan Tymofeev) from Adventures Lab comments that the founder of the startup refused the offer from one of the big US players in legal tech wishing to buy the promising project. The investor appreciates his willingness to develop OneNotary independently and achieve a worldwide level.
Spice AI startup developed by Luke Kim received $1 million from TA Ventures. Luke has 10-years’ experience working at Microsoft. He created an AI-powered platform for software developers. With the help of this platform, modern applications can be created useful for optimizing in-store pickups for large online retailers or scheduling optimizations for healthcare workers and resources.
