Principle, an AI-powered strategic forecasting platform, has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by SMRK VC and SMOK Ventures, with participation from RideHome AI Fund, a16z Scout Fund, Bain Capital Scout Fund, and Unpopular Ventures.

About the startup

• Founded in 2024, Ukrainian startup Principle is building a strategic forecasting platform that helps companies model competitive futures for better strategic decision-making.
• The platform is already being piloted with Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and leaders in the energy market.

«Most of a company’s value lies in its future. Principle helps businesses unlock that potential,» said Vlad Tislenko, Partner at SMRK VC.

«Strategic forecasting has always required deep expertise, but until now, there has been no infrastructure for scaling it. We are investing to help the team bring Principle to the global enterprise market,» said Sasha Yatsenko, Principal at SMOK Ventures.

• Principle was founded by Artur Kiulian and Yuriy Filipchuk, originally from Ukraine, who have experience at Google and CERN and have collaborated with the White House and large corporations.
• The company is now based in San Francisco. As a pre-seed startup, Principle also received a grant from the Google for Startups Ukraine Support Fund.

What problem are they solving?

• In most companies, strategic decisions are made using outdated information, intuition, and static plans that quickly become irrelevant as market conditions change. Scalable, full-fledged scenario planning remains a privilege of large corporations such as Shell, which employs hundreds of specialists to model possible futures.

«Every Fortune 500 company we talk to has the same problem: they misread market signals, react too slowly to structural changes, and by the time it becomes obvious, it’s too late. We are building infrastructure that makes strategic forecasting accessible to every company,» said Artur Kiulian, co-founder and CEO of Principle.

• Principle creates digital twins of companies, competitors, regulators, and market forces, then runs simulations across hundreds of strategic scenarios. Unlike conventional AI tools, the platform relies on persistent models that are continuously updated with new market data, such as competitor actions, regulatory changes, price fluctuations, and M&A activity.
• The company is also training its own model on AWS Nova architecture to improve how it classifies the probability of future market events, joining early adopters such as Reddit, Sony, and Booking.com.

Background

• Principle grew out of the founders’ experience working with governments on implementing AI at the national level. In 2025, the team signed a memorandum with Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation to help develop national AI capabilities. That work evolved into a collaboration with Texty.org.ua on research into artificial intelligence in the context of Ukrainian sovereignty — a project later included in the Global Investigative Journalism Network’s selection of the best data journalism stories of 2025.

• The collaboration later expanded to the Middle East, including benchmarking AI models with Doha Institute for Graduate Studies as part of the Qatar Sovereign AI Initiative, as well as partnerships with the Dubai Health Authority on public health strategy and the Dubai Future Foundation on scenario modeling for healthcare system resilience.
• This experience allowed the team to test its methodologies at a scale of data inaccessible to most startups.

«Corporate AI solutions have optimized individual productivity — assistants for coding and document writing. Palantir helps companies process internal data efficiently. But there is still a lack of solutions focused on determining a company’s strategic direction. We took the methodology of military simulations, or wargaming, and adapted it to business strategy,» said Yuriy Filipchuk, co-founder of Principle.