Like many Ukrainians, Valerii Iakovenko and his family ended up far from home in 2022 after the full-scale Russian invasion; in Pennsylvania, to be precise. Valerii wasn’t just seeking safe harbor in a storm, though. He was also expanding his business, which happens to be agricultural scouting with drones. His story illustrates the little-known but significant benefits that Ukrainian-American businesses have brought to the United States economy.
Valerii considered tech hubs like California or Austin but chose to open an engineering center in New Town, Pennsylvania. His company pioneered agro-scouting and aerial fertilization in Ukraine, helping farmers see what’s invisible from the ground, including soil anomalies, missing equipment, and nutrient stress.
Ukraine was an early adopter of drone farming, but its skies are now too dangerous for civilian UAVs. Instead, Valerii’s company supplies farmers from North Carolina to Ohio and Maine with aerial drones to increase harvests and improve field health. “It’s not just about drones,” Iakovenko says. “It’s about building a culture of innovation and helping young people return to rural areas. It’s the same kind of leap as when smartphones replaced push-button phones.”
Iakovenko is a small part of a big story about how Ukrainian entrepreneurship is contributing to local economies across the United States. A new report by the ISE Group, a think tank and startup accelerator with offices in Warsaw, Washington DC, and Kyiv, estimates that Ukrainian-American companies generate nearly $60 billion in annual revenue and support about 300,000 US jobs.
The findings are the first attempt to quantify the economic footprint of Ukrainian-American businesses in the US. Researchers mapped and verified 2,270 Ukrainian-American firms across all fifty states and surveyed a network of more than 45,000 diaspora enterprises. Collectively, the report says, these firms bring in around $55 billion in annual sales, pay out roughly $24 billion in wages, and contribute at least $8 billion in federal, state, and local taxes.
Voice of Ukraine 