06 August 2026
(PHOTO: Oleksandr Bornyakov/Facebook)
Former Odessa City Council member Oleksandr Bornyakov has been appointed chairman of the supervisory board of the Brave1 defense cluster.
He announced this new phase in his career on his Facebook page.
“I’m returning to where I can create the most value for the development of Ukrainian technologies and the defense innovation ecosystem. Previously, I was part of the government bureaucracy—coordinating, launching, and scaling systemic changes. Now my role is to ensure strategic focus, ask the right questions, demand results, and help Brave1 move even faster,” he said.
Among his key tasks in his new position, he cited: improving the efficiency of Brave1’s grant model so that more Ukrainian innovations lead to contracts with the Armed Forces; attracting private investment to the defense tech sector; streamlining the process from technology development to export; and developing areas where Ukraine can become a global technology leader.
Brave1 is a state-run defense technology cluster launched in Ukraine in late April 2023. It is a joint initiative of six government institutions: the Ministry of Digital Transformation, the Ministry of Defense, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the National Security and Defense Council, the Ministry of Strategic Industries, and the Ministry of Economy.
Brave1 has become the sole platform for collaboration between military technology developers, companies, the government, and the military. Simply put, it is a “one-stop shop” through which startups and companies can submit their defense projects (drones, electronic warfare systems, robots, etc.), undergo military evaluation, receive a grant, and, in the future, secure a contract with the government or achieve certification to NATO standards.
In July of this year, Bornyakov resigned from the Ministry of Digital Transformation, which he had been leading on an interim basis since January 2026.
Oleksandr Bornyakov is anentrepreneur and one of the key figures driving digital transformation in Ukraine. In 2007, he founded the IT company SoftTechnics, which was later acquired by the American company Intersog. He is also the founder of VertaMedia, a platform for monetizing video advertising (operating under the Adtelligent Inc. brand since 2018), as well as a co-founder of Clickky and the business incubator WannaBiz.
From 2015 to 2019, he served as a member of the Odesa City Council and the Odesa Regional Council. Since 2019, he has served as Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation, where he has been responsible, among other things, for the development of Diya City, the uResidency program, and European integration efforts.
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