Ukraine's Brave1 Market cuts in-stock drone delivery to eight days

Why it matters

Brave1 Market ties battlefield performance directly to procurement, giving defense founders faster validation while letting military units choose equipment for immediate operational needs.

Brave1, led by former banking CIO Andrii Hrytseniuk, has cut the average delivery time for in-stock equipment ordered through Ukraine's state defense-tech marketplace to eight days, down from 10 to 14 days. Ukrainian units placed more than UAH 5 billion, or roughly $111 million, of orders through Brave1 Market in June, the largest monthly total since the ePoints purchasing program began, according to Ukraine's Ministry of Defence. Business Insider first reported the latest delivery figure in the US.

Hrytseniuk brought a software operator's resume to a procurement system built for wartime speed. Before taking over Brave1 in 2025, he served as CIO and board member at PrivatBank and Sense Bank and worked on Ukrainian government services including Diia and Mriia, according to his IT Arena biography. The marketplace he now runs grew out of work started under Nataliia Kushnerska, a project manager and former adviser to Ukraine's First Deputy Minister of Economy who helped launch Brave1 in April 2023. Kushnerska and her team introduced Brave1 Market in April 2025, turning the cluster's network of developers into a catalog that military units could buy from directly.

Brave1 Market is state infrastructure rather than a venture-backed marketplace. The Innovation Development Fund implements Brave1 on behalf of Ukrainian government and defense institutions, while private manufacturers compete for orders placed by frontline units.

A marketplace built around the end user

Units can select FPV attack drones, bombers, longer-range strike systems, interceptor drones, unmanned ground vehicles and electronic warfare equipment. More than 1,000 products are currently eligible for purchase using ePoints, the Ministry of Defence said on July 28th.

That count covers the products available through the points program, rather than the entire Brave1 Market catalog. Hrytseniuk said in a February interview with DOU that more than 700 Ukrainian manufacturers had listed 3,300 products, with 400 products then available for ePoints. Business Insider reported that the broader marketplace has since grown past 4,000 listings.

Access is divided between public and restricted catalogs. Verified military personnel can use Ukraine's DELTA system to enter the closed catalog, where sensitive equipment is listed. Units can also place orders using their own purchasing budgets through a buyer account, giving manufacturers a digital sales channel for decentralized procurement.

The model reverses a common procurement sequence. Instead of sending a request through layers of military administration and waiting for a centrally selected product, units choose the equipment, frequency bands and specifications needed for their missions. Hrytseniuk told DOU that the previous process could take six to 12 months and sometimes delivered systems that had already become ineffective or required modification.

The UAH 5 billion figure needs context

The June total is the value of equipment ordered through Brave1 Market, including unmanned aerial and ground vehicles and EW and ELINT systems. It is not Brave1 revenue. Orders can be placed with unit funds or ePoints, a closed purchasing currency awarded for verified combat outcomes, reconnaissance and missions completed with unmanned ground vehicles.

The payment and fulfillment layer is handled through DOT-Chain Defence, which manages state payments and delivery after a unit selects a product. That distinction matters because the headline order value combines conventional unit purchases with equipment redeemed through a state incentive system.

The volume is still substantial. More than 400 combat units have joined the updated ePoints program, ordering over UAH 33 billion of equipment and more than 500,000 drones in less than a year, according to the ministry. March changes also allowed units to spend points on cameras, receivers, navigation equipment, controllers, software and other components, letting soldiers modify systems for specific operating conditions.

Battlefield performance becomes a sales signal

Brave1 Market gives manufacturers data that conventional defense procurement rarely exposes. Suppliers can see how products rank, how many missions they have completed and which units use them most. Ratings and field-use statistics let developers compare equipment against competing systems and decide where to change hardware, software or production capacity.

That creates a feedback loop between battlefield performance and purchasing. A unit can identify a product that works in its operating area, order more of it and leave data that influences future demand. Manufacturers get evidence of performance without waiting for a years-long procurement review, while the state collects information that can shape larger centralized contracts.

Ukraine is already using that information in broader drone procurement. The Ministry of Defence said in June that ratings assembled from ePoints, DOT-Chain Defence, Brave1 Market, DELTA and Mission Control help determine which products are purchased for frontline units. The ministry also said 95% of drones procured through the Defence Procurement Agency are Ukrainian-made. DOT-Chain Defence processed 485,000 drones and other items worth UAH 31.4 billion during the first five months of 2026, with an average nine-day delivery time for in-stock equipment.

From grants to an industrial operating system

Brave1 started in 2023 as a coordination and grant program connecting government agencies, military users and Ukrainian defense developers. It has since expanded into testing, codification, procurement and international development partnerships. Brave1 says it has issued more than 750 grants totaling UAH 3.7 billion, while its current grant program offers individual projects between UAH 500,000 and UAH 8 million.

The marketplace gives those grants a path beyond prototype funding. A developer can receive technical guidance, test equipment with military users, complete codification and compete for orders on the same state-backed network. For Ukrainian defense founders, that compresses the distance between engineering work and a paying customer while exposing weak products to direct comparison.

Brave1 is also exporting the operating model. On July 1st, Brave1 signed its first strategic industrial partnership with a Western defense contractor, bringing Airbus Defence and Space into its Test in Ukraine framework. Airbus and Ukrainian units plan to co-test systems and return operational data directly to engineering teams.

The eight-day delivery metric shows how far Brave1 Market has moved beyond an online catalog. Hrytseniuk and the officials who built the system are treating procurement as software: units generate demand, manufacturers compete on field performance, and delivery data shows where the process is still slowing down. That structure gives smaller defense developers a route into military purchasing that does not depend solely on relationships with a traditional prime contractor.