Ukrainian weapons startups are finally seeing an inflow of funds from Western investors who have long been intrigued by the Ukraine’s defense tech sector but have so far kept their money out of the war-torn country.
Financial analysis firm Pitchbook provided the Kyiv Independent with data showing a four-fold rise in foreign venture capital deals in Ukraine-headquartered startups after the market flatlined in 2022 and 2023 following Russia’s invasion.
The total dollar value remains slim — just under $20 million by Pitchfork’s accounting, and $40 million according to the Ukrainian government. But with most of these new deals coming in at the end of 2024, a dam may be bursting.
Nice. This implies that these businesses are concluding that Ukraine is going to win - or at least, not lose - and will therefore retain its sovereignty. Their investments wouldn’t be safe otherwise.
This sort of thing is why betting markets are so good at prediction. Experts can pontificate and analyze all they want but at the end of the day a betting market requires people to put their money where their mouth is.
I still often wonder to what extent the tail is wagging the dog. If enough money is riding on an outcome, does money go towards ensuring that outcome?
Clarification: I would welcome it in this case, but I am interested in hearing from anyone who knows about betting markets generally affecting outcomes.
Oh it’s surely calculated into the outcome already!
Spending money to make money 🤑
I would imagine it’s not a problem if the betting market is small compared to the things being bet on. In this case you’d have to manipulate the long term outcome of the Ukraine war to win a few tens of millions of dollars, which seems unlikely.
That’s entirely clear, at those levels. Absent some kind of chaos theory hypothesis, you’d need billions of dollars in motion to motivate that kind of action.