Army of Robots

Army of Robots is the initiative Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s former defence minister, unveiled on 26 September 2026 on stage at IT Arena in Lviv and in a post the same day. Its own website describes it as “an open movement” whose purpose is “to replace people with robots on the battlefield and save lives”, and calls for “Ukraine’s own Manhattan Project for Physical AI”. Fedorov is explicit that it is “not a single company. It is an ecosystem”: it will invest in defence-tech companies, launch its own technology projects, build R&D capabilities, test solutions alongside the military and scale whatever proves effective at the front.

The framing is a sequel. In 2022 Fedorov, then digital-transformation minister, launched the Army of Drones, the state programme that bought, repaired and crewed unmanned aircraft at scale; by his account drones now deliver more than 95% of strikes and Ukraine has more than 700 UAV manufacturers. Army of Robots applies the same logic to the ground. The stated targets are unusually specific: a humanoid robot engaging its first enemy soldier within six months, and the first assault on an enemy position with no infantry involved within twelve. The tasks named for the robots are evacuating the wounded, delivering ammunition, mining and demining, reconnaissance, holding positions and engaging targets; humanoids are floated for reloading machine guns, swapping batteries and installing sensors. Reporting from Euromaidan Press describes the launch as “a vision more than fielded capability” — no platform, prototype or supplier has been named.

What exists today is a recruitment funnel. The site lists exactly three roles — a project CTO or tech lead, robotics engineers, and robotics companies — and the same form doubles as an investor intake, asking funds, business angels and corporations whether they want to co-invest, syndicate or form a strategic partnership. Contact is a single address, [email protected]. No legal entity, registration, headquarters, team or partner is disclosed on the site, and the Kyiv Independent notes that Fedorov did not specify which organisation operates the initiative; his press team did not respond to its request for clarification.

The money around it is real but separately announced. On 31 August 2026 Fedorov said his team had secured resources for what he called the largest venture fund in Ukraine’s defence-tech sector, based in Kyiv and aimed at battlefield robotics and sensors, cheap interceptors and low-cost AI-enabled missiles; no amount was given. On 1 September, after a meeting at Palantir’s Washington office, he announced that he was building a defence-technology company and that Palantir chief executive Alex Karp would be its “first lead investor”. Reuters, Defense News and CNBC reported the investment as a personal one by Karp; the size was not disclosed, Palantir has not confirmed any corporate involvement, and the company has not been named. Whether that company is the vehicle behind Army of Robots is not something Fedorov has said, and this profile does not assume it.

The initiative has no stated tie to BRAVE1, the state defence-tech cluster Fedorov co-founded in 2023, or to the Ministry of Defence beyond an aspiration to test with the armed forces. It launched into an open question raised on 9 September by MP Oleksiy Honcharenko, who asked whether Fedorov’s new ventures are registered with the State Export Control Service for military-goods transfers. The Ukrainian OSINT group InformNapalm argued the concept is incomplete without maintenance crews, charging infrastructure and programmers in the rear, and without operational Cyber Forces legislation. Fedorov’s answer, given at the launch, was that “Russia will stop only when we can break its backbone”.