Tech.eu: Marcin Kovalevskij Builds Valkyrie Dynamics' Drone Radar Lab in Kyiv

Some founders build a company from a garage. Marcin Kovalevskij built his from a factory floor in Kyiv. His startup, Valkyrie Dynamics, has raised €1 million in a pre-seed round from Paris-based venture studio Hexa, with defence tech angel investors taking part, Tech.eu reported on November 10.

The company is headquartered in Lithuania but runs its research lab in the Ukrainian capital. It makes miniature radar seekers that help low-cost drone interceptors find their targets in bad weather, a problem Ukraine faces every winter.

The Problem Valkyrie Wants to Solve

According to Tech.eu, most low-cost interceptors still rely on optical and thermal cameras, which struggle in rain, fog, smoke and snow. The report cited analysis that bad weather can cut drone visibility by up to 80 per cent beyond a few dozen metres.

The threat is also changing. Tech.eu reported that Russia is replacing propeller-driven Shahed drones with faster, jet-powered versions that typical interceptors can no longer catch. The team calls October through March "Shahed season," when longer nights and heavier cloud cover bring more attacks.

The Product

Valkyrie's answer is Heimdall, a radar seeker that sits in the nose cone of an interceptor. Once in the air, an interceptor has only a rough idea of where its target is. In the final stretch, Heimdall gives the operator a radar view, so the target stays visible when cameras fail.

Tech.eu said the device weighs about 100 grams and has a target price below €300 per unit at volume, far cheaper than ground radars or heavy sensors. It supports both piloted flight and autonomous flight when paired with a partner's guidance module, while the final decision to engage stays with a human pilot or the interceptor maker's own systems.

The Founder's Path

Kovalevskij trained as an engineering physicist and began his career building electronics and embedded flight systems at France's CNRS and at the space startup Exotrail. Tech.eu reported that conversations with Ukrainian officers at the European Defence Tech Hackathon in London in 2025 gave him the idea for Heimdall.

He worked on the concept on weekends while living in Lithuania and paid for the earliest work himself. Once he had saved enough, he packed his equipment into two suitcases and moved to Kyiv. For his first five months there, he slept on the floor of a factory that had previously been hit by missiles.

By October 2026, Valkyrie had a working prototype and had joined Hexa Sprint Defense, an acceleration programme for early-stage European defence and dual-use startups. Hexa partner Guillaume Lerouge said in the Tech.eu report that Valkyrie is the first Ukrainian team in the programme.

Why Kyiv

The location is the strategy. Tech.eu reported that the Kyiv lab lets the team iterate hardware in days rather than months, working directly with frontline operators. For a hardware founder, that feedback loop is hard to buy at any price.

What the Money Is For

The funds will pay for manufacturing the first version of the radar seeker, product development and hiring. Valkyrie is integrating Heimdall with companies that build guidance modules and interceptors, and Tech.eu said recent flight tests were carried out with Korven Systems, a Ukrainian-Estonian developer of autonomy systems.

The roadmap includes seekers with greater range and a wider field of view, a later move into ground vehicles and other unmanned platforms, and European integration hubs planned for late 2026 to serve NATO procurement programmes.

Lessons for Founders

Few founders will build in a war zone, but Kovalevskij's story holds lessons that travel. He started with a problem he heard directly from users, funded early work himself, and moved to where the feedback was fastest.

He also kept the product narrow: one small, affordable component that makes other companies' systems better. Selling into existing platforms rather than replacing them is often the quickest route to real customers.

Founder 100 will keep watching how Valkyrie turns a €1 million start into a manufacturing business. For now, it is a clear example of a founder who went to the problem instead of waiting for it to come to him.