Ukrainian company Esper Bionics, which develops bio-prosthetics including for Ukrainian soldiers, has closed another investment round and plans to expand its production.
The $5 million round was led by venture fund YZR Capital based in Munich, with co-financing from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the venture capital arm of Horizon Capital u.ventures, according to a company statement. The funds will fuel Esper Bionics’ R&D efforts, scale up production, and modernize its Bionic ecosystem.
Esper Bionics’ production facilities are located in Kyiv and Berlin. As of June 2024, the startup manufactures 30 prosthetics per month or over 300 annually, aiming to reach 500 by the end of 2024, as reported by Forbes citing co-founder and CEO Dmytro Hazda. The company plans to allocate the raised funds towards developing prosthetic controllers and a cloud platform with machine learning capabilities.
In May, Esper Bionics received a $150,000 grant from USAID. The total investment in the startup since its inception amounts to $7 million. The current valuation of the company has not been disclosed by the founders.
About Esper Bionics:
Esper Bionics, founded in 2019 by serial entrepreneur Dmytro Hazda, economist Anna Belevantseva, former lawyer Ihor Ilchenko, and engineer Boris Lobanov, develops robotic limbs. The startup currently employs over 55 professionals, mostly technical specialists, with the team more than doubling in size over the past eighteen months.
The company operates offices in New York, Lviv, and Berlin, with its headquarters located in New York. The United States is Esper Bionics’ primary market, where prosthetics are sold through insurance companies. A business team operates there, managing partnerships and operational affairs. In Berlin, the focus is on electronics and firmware development. The team in Ukraine handles development, hardware components, and all aspects of prosthetic manufacturing and assembly for testing.
Through the social program Esper for Ukraine, financed by charitable funds, 80 Ukrainian defenders have received bionic prosthetics.
The cost of each prosthetic is $22,000.
