The general public may not visibly know Ukraine’s influence in the global tech environment, but the country has been the birthplace of many leading tech apps, including WhatsApp, Snapchat, Grammarly and PayPal.
Amid the ongoing war in Ukraine and intensifying attacks from the Russian forces, the country’s technology sector has taken the initiative to help defend their land against attacks in cyberspace, as well as providing funds for the Ukrainian army and many tech startups and established companies making an effort to relocate their employees to safer regions.
Recently, Forbes Ukraine tech editor Mike Sapiton tweeted a thread of products and technologies originating from the country that has had an impact on people’s lives globally, “This war is not about Ukraine. It’s about all of you,” he tweeted, highlighting the technologies that received mainstream success in the global market.
Let’s take a look at the biggest tech companies from Ukraine
Ukrainian emigrant Jan Koum co-founded WhatsApp. He was born in 1976 in Fastiv from where he moved to the United States. Currently, WhatsApp is owned and operated by Facebook’s parent company Meta who acquired it in 2014 for $19.3 billion.
The global payment service app PayPal was one of the earliest digital payment systems available; it was co-founded by Max Levchin, who is also an emigrant. In addition to co-founding PayPal, Levchin now runs credit network company Affirm.
Three Ukrainians founded Grammarly; Max Lytvyn, Alex Shevchenko, and Dmytro Lider. It is an online service designed to assist people with writing grammatically correct and error-free content. Its largest office continues to be in Kyiv.
Snapchat’s popular masking tech, which creates filters, was developed by Looksery, a company from Odessa. Yurii Monastyrshin spearheaded it, and the company has offices in the US and Ukraine.
GitLab, developed by Dmitriy Zaporozhets in 2011, is an open-source repository developer tool used by firms such as NASA, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, AT&T and IBM.
Artificial intelligence-based companies like Peoples.AI, based out of Ukraine, helps sales teams work efficiently with their clients and is prominently used by Fortune 500 companies.
Another well-known AI service is Traces.AI, which has built technology to analyze over 2,000 physical traits of a person using security cameras. It has been used to find missing people in a short time.
Edited By- Subbuthai Padma
Published By- Satheesh Kumar
