Resist.ua launches €50M Resist 2.0 fund for Ukrainian defense tech

Resist.ua has opened Resist 2.0, a €50 million European investment fund aimed at Ukrainian defense and dual-use tech founders — and at the international LPs who still can't quite figure out how to underwrite a battlefield-tested cap table.

What's actually new here

Resist 2.0 targets up to €50 million in commitments, positioned as the bridge between foreign capital and Ukrainian teams building scalable businesses under wartime constraints. It follows directly from Resist.ua's first fund, which reviewed 600 projects, engaged more than 100 startups, and assembled a portfolio now valued above $10 million, including stakes in Farsight Vision and M-FLY.

Why the numbers matter more than the headline

A €50 million target is modest next to generalist CEE vehicles, but defense tech isn't priced like SaaS. Dual-use hardware — drones, EW, ISR, autonomy stacks — has capital intensity closer to deep tech than to the software multiples most Romanian and Baltic funds are used to. The 600-projects-to-100-portfolio-companies funnel from Fund I signals a sourcing machine that's already doing the filtering work most CEE micro-funds can't afford to build themselves.

Why it matters for RO/EE VCs and founders

Ukraine's defense sector has become the default proving ground for battlefield-validated technology that later re-exports into NATO procurement — a pipeline Romanian and Polish founders adjacent to border logistics, surveillance and counter-drone tech should be watching closely. Bucharest- and Warsaw-based funds without direct Ukraine exposure are increasingly structuring co-investment or advisory ties into vehicles like Resist.ua rather than sourcing Ukrainian defense deals cold — the operational and export-control complexity is too high to DIY. Expect Romanian defense-adjacent founders (drone components, sensors, secure comms) to start citing Farsight Vision and M-FLY as reference deals when pitching Western defense-tech LPs. The bigger second-order effect: as Resist 2.0 formalizes the international-LP-to-Ukrainian-founder pipeline, it sets a governance and due-diligence template that other CEE defense-tech vehicles — including any Romanian equivalent — will be measured against.

The open question

The available reporting doesn't specify Resist 2.0's check sizes, stage focus, or whether it's structured as equity, revenue-share, or blended with grant capital — details that matter enormously in a sector where procurement contracts, not ARR, often determine valuation. Until that's public, treat the €50 million figure as a fundraising target, not a closed number.

Key takeaways

• Resist.ua launched Resist 2.0, targeting up to €50 million to fund Ukrainian defense and dual-use startups — a direct sequel to a Fund I that built a $10M+ portfolio from 600 evaluated projects.
• Portfolio companies Farsight Vision and M-FLY are the fund's public proof points and likely comparables for founders pitching adjacent RO/EE defense-tech deals.
• For Romanian and CEE investors, the fund formalizes a sourcing and governance channel into Ukrainian defense tech that's increasingly hard to access independently given export-control and operational complexity.