Ukraine’s The Fourth Law Backed by Axon to Expand Drone Autonomy R&D

KYIV, Ukraine — 17 February 2026

The Fourth Law, a Kyiv-headquartered defense technology company, has secured a strategic investment from U.S. public safety technology group Axon, the company said Monday. The funding amount was not disclosed.

Axon, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, has a market capitalization of about $33.9 billion as of mid-February, according to published reports. The investment marks Axon’s second disclosed backing of a Ukrainian defense tech company after leading a seed round for Farsight Vision announced the previous week.

The Fourth Law was founded in Kyiv in 2023 by entrepreneur Yaroslav Azhnyuk, best known for his earlier consumer tech startup PetCube. The Fourth Law develops AI and robotics solutions for defense and public safety. Its flagship products include the Lupynis-10-TFL-1 unmanned aerial vehicle and the TFL-1 autonomy module, which the company says are used by more than 50 Ukrainian military units across multiple sections of the front.

Azhnyuk said the investment will be used primarily for research and development, including expanding its engineering team and advancing autonomy capabilities intended to help protect cities and critical infrastructure from Shahed-type drone attacks.

Axon founder and CEO Rick Smith said the company is investing because Ukraine’s battlefield conditions are accelerating drone development in ways other countries struggle to match. He said teams such as The Fourth Law are building autonomy in “real combat conditions,” where systems are created, tested and improved in real time.

The company says its first-level autonomy improves FPV drone mission success rates by a factor of two to four while adding about 10% to unit cost. It positions the technology as platform-agnostic, designed to be installed on third-party airframes, used with different ground stations, and operated across various connectivity architectures.

They also recently launched TFL-AntiShahed, a module for interceptor drones that uses edge AI to detect and highlight strike drones such as the Shahed and Geran faster than human observation, the company said. The system autonomously identifies targets in thermal imagery by analyzing motion patterns, heat signatures and other parameters.

The company said it first connected with Axon through BRAVE1 after a meeting between Smith and Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's Minister of Defense, with BRAVE1 supporting the process that led to the investment. In a statement, Fedorov said autonomy technologies can increase precision, speed decision-making and help save the lives of service members.

In July 2025, UA Tech Journal reported that The Fourth Law raised its first disclosed funding round from investors in the United States, the European Union and Canada, including Finnish-Ukrainian firm Double Tap Investments, as it began publicly detailing its autonomy roadmap. At the time, the company said its TFL-1 module takes over control in the final 500 meters of flight to guide drones to targets in jamming and GPS-denied conditions.

The company’s Lupynis-10-TFL-1 platform was positioned as both a standalone drone and a full UAS package, with reported strike range of up to 30 kilometers carrying a 1-kilogram payload, or up to 3.5 kilograms at shorter distances. That earlier report also outlined a five-stage autonomy roadmap spanning terminal guidance through autonomous takeoff and landing, a foundation the company said could later support swarms and interceptors.

Azhnyuk framed Axon’s investment as both an acceleration of autonomy development for Ukraine’s defense needs and a step toward expanding into the U.S. market, including public safety applications. He previously pivoted from consumer technology into defense tech after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Axon’s move adds to a growing list of partnerships linking Ukrainian defense startups with international strategic players, as companies seek manufacturing scale and longer-term export pathways while wartime production constraints continue to shape the market.