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Drone software developer Swarmer made a spectacular debut on the Nasdaq this week in a landmark initial public offering for the Ukrainian defense tech industry. Swarmer priced its shares at just $5 but they rocketed to a peak of $60 in its first days of trading under the ticker symbol SWMR, reflecting red-hot investor interest in the company’s key focus areas — artificial intelligence and drone warfare.
Swarmer is developing AI-based software systems that allow unmanned vehicles to act autonomously and “swarm,” or work cooperatively in teams. Last year, The Air Current interviewed the company’s global CEO, Serhii Kupriienko, at the company’s headquarters in Kyiv. Earlier this week, TAC connected with Swarmer’s U.S. CEO, Alex Fink, to discuss the company’s decision to go public and the outlook for its technology.
Related: In Ukraine, a slow march towards the autonomous future of drone warfare
“We expect to be the first IPO in the history of Ukrainian defense tech,” Fink said, “and we really hope that that opens up the path for other companies and also opens the eyes of Western investors to the fact that they can invest and potentially make money, but also have an immediate impact on what is probably one of the more important conflicts going on right now.”
With war now metastasizing in the Middle East, Swarmer is also looking beyond Ukraine’s borders: “We know that there are other active theaters in the world right now, and we’re working to try to contribute to the effort in those as well,” said Fink.
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