Global Courant
Rather than waiting for US tech CEOs to come to Ukraine, Ukraine’s leading tech owner and CEO, Boosteroid’s Ivan Shvaichenko, went to the United States to launch its US headquarters and future $1 billion-plus NASDAQ listing of the world’s third-largest cloud-game hosting company after GE Force of Nvidia and XCloud of Microsoft.
But Shvaichenko’s first stop in the United States was not a meeting with Silicon Valley tycoons but to attend a Sunday service at the historic St John Baptist Church of the Reverend R E Robinson in Gary, Indiana, and a discussion of how Ukraine-US cross-border investment can be used to transform his native city of Kharkiv and the economically abandoned city of Gary.
Boosteroid founder and CEO Ivan Shvaichenko and general counsel Vlad Kosmin attracting the interest of Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb and US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and attending a church service by Saint John the Baptist Reverend R E Robinson with host Gary Crusader, editor and publisher Dorothy R Leavell and later meeting with Gary, Indiana mayor-designate Eddie Melton, Indiana State Representative Vernon Smith, and Gary NAACP president Steve Mays on Boosteroid’s plan to set up data centers and an IT/gaming developer boot camp/academy in Gary based on operations in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on August 13, 2023.
Hosted by the publisher of the Gary and Chicago Crusader newspapers, Dorothy Leavell, Shvaichenko discussed how Boosteroid can establish a gaming and software development bootcamp/academy in Gary as it is doing in war-ravaged Kharkiv and help Gary fulfill its ambition to become the Midwest hub for cloud hosting data centers.
Gary mayor-designate Eddie Melton noted that the city lies on top of one of the largest dark fiber-optic cable networks in the United States and its proximity (39 kilometers) to America’s second city, Chicago.
Shvaichenko and his team were in the United States scouting locations for its US headquarters and finalize deals to acquire $20 million in servers from the likes of Houston, Texas-based Hewlett Packard Entreprise and others to boost its current six data centers in the United States.
Boosteroid’s work in Gary has won the praise of both US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, with Holcomb asking that Indiana’s Economic Development Corporation immediately reach out to Boosteroid on how it can facilitate investment in one of the most economically depressed cities in the United States.
Gary, once named America’s “City of the Century” and Indiana’s second city when it was a major industrial center after being founded by US Steel chairman Elbert H Gary and banking giant JPMorgan in 1906, now lies mainly abandoned after the precipitous decline of US Steel and subsequent “white flight” after violent race riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr on April 4, 1968.
Gary is now better known for being the birthplace of Michael Jackson and The Jackson Five.
Vista Equity Partners founder and chairman Robert F Smith speaks to Capitol Intelligence/CI Ukraine on how he has been supporting Ukraine for decades and is making new investments into the country, while attending the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial on August 26, 2023.
Just as the Ukrainian business owner is looking at overlooked areas of America for opportunities, one of the biggest technology investors in the United States, Austin, Texas-based Vista Equity Partners founder and chief executive officer Robert F Smith, said he has been investing in Ukraine for years and is increasing the $100 billion PE/VC fund exposure to the country.
Among other CEOs showing corporate leadership regarding their commitment to Ukraine is Hiroshi Mikitani, the founder of Japan’s $9 billion tech concern Rakuten, who traveled to Kiev to illustrate the company’s commitment to Ukraine through its secure Viber messaging app.
UK law firm Freshfield has also shown leadership by offering Ukrainian corporates pro bono legal services as part of its work to set up a Ukrainian development fund. Freshfield immediately closed its Moscow office and fired its Russian clients after the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.
Charles Woodburn, the CEO of UK defense conglomerate BAE Systems, also traveled to Ukraine to mark the signing of an agreement to set up a Ukrainian defense company, a move that President Volodymyr Zelensky would probably like to see replicated by Lockheed Martin CEO James D Taiclet, L3Harris CEO Chris Kubasik and Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy J Warden.
Smith’s bullish investment sentiment for Ukraine, justified by the country’s well-earned reputation for being one the leading technology and software development centers in the world, is the opposite of the pro-China, anti-Ukraine sentiments of Tesla’s founder Elon Musk, Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang and Palantir chairman Peter Thiel.
Nvidia is facing allegations in Ukraine that the company bent to Russian pressure at the outset of the invasion by blocking the shipment of graphic cards to Ukrainian companies. Nvidia only shut down its Russian operations on October 3, 2022, some seven months after the invasion.
Nvidia spokesman Ken Brown, wearing a US-Ukraine lapel, declined comment when asked about the serious charge leveled against Nvidia by Ukraine technology companies.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Palantir CEO Alex Carp and Microsoft founder Bill Gates at a closed-door AI Insight Forum organized by US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at the Russell Senate Building in Washington on September 13, 2023.
Even as Zelensky traveled to meet with US President Joe Biden and congressional leadership this month to unblock the supply of ATACMS long-range missiles and shortening the timetable for F-16 deliveries, Ukraine’s business leaders are doing everything in their power to continue to attract Western investment to sustain Ukraine during wartime but also kick-start the reconstruction of the country once the war is over.
The Chicago Skyway, the $2 billion tollbridge connecting Gary and Chicago owned and operated by Australia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, Macquarie, and Canada’s Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, could be the bridge that can raise the fortunes of Gary and Ukraine.
The Chicago Skyway, the first and still the largest privatization of a state-owned asset in the continental United States, is of extreme interest to Ukraine as it lobbies other global infrastructure leaders such as Macquarie; the Benetton family Mundys (ex-Atlantia) infrastructure venture with Blackstone; and Singapore Temasek to take over Ukrainian state-owned airports and highways.
Ukraine would like global infrastructure groups to take over critical state assets, especially because the availability of billions of dollars in project financing including political and war risk insurance available from the US International Development Finance Corp, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank’s International Finance Corp (IFC).
The Skyway that spans Indiana and Illinois directly connects Holcomb with billionaire Illinois Governor J B Pritzker and his sister, former US commerce secretary and recently named presidential envoy for Ukraine’s economic recovery, Penny Pritzker.
Kharkiv Oblast Chairwoman Tatyana Yegorova-Lutsenko speaks with Capitol Intelligence/CI Ukraine on her talks with Ohio Governor Mike DeWine to forge a partnership agreement between Kharkiv region and the State of Ohio after the Sister City partnership between Kharkiv and Cincinnati, Ohio, in Kiev on June 8, 2023.
But Shvaichenko’s journey to Gary also built a profoundly important bridge between the Ukrainian people and the black American community who have always led in the struggle for freedom and the equal protection of law as guaranteed by the US constitution.
During the church service in Gary there was no need to explain the suffering and pain inflicted on Ukraine by Russia’s war while all were reminded of Martin Luther King’s words: “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
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