The International Soft Skills Summit 2026, dedicated to the development of individuals, teams, and organizations in the context of the spread of artificial intelligence, will take place September 12–14 in a hybrid format and will bring together over 70 Ukrainian and international experts.
According to the event organizers, the first day of the summit will take place in person in Kyiv with an online livestream, while the remaining two days will be held online. More than 5,000 people are expected to participate.
The summit will also feature the inaugural Soft Skills Summit Awards 2026—a professional award for corporate programs in the areas of leadership development, talent development, team development, corporate culture, and soft skills.
According to the organizers, the Soft Skills Summit program is structured around three levels of development: the individual, the team, and the organization.
On September 12, the program will focus on individual development. On this day in Kyiv, there will be presentations on the main stage, panel discussions, hands-on Soft Skills Hubs, a Mindfulness Zone, an EXPO, Guided Speed Networking, and the awards ceremony for the winners of the Soft Skills Summit Awards 2026.
On September 13, the online program will focus on team development, communication, psychological safety, and modern approaches to leadership.
On September 14, participants will discuss corporate culture, talent and change management, organizational effectiveness, and corporate transformation driven by artificial intelligence.
“Today, a company’s competitive advantage is determined not only by technology. It is determined by people—their ability to think, interact, learn, and lead others through change. That is why we created the Soft Skills Summit—a platform that brings together global expertise and Ukrainian experience to help people, teams, and organizations prepare for the future,” said Ihor Lukianenko and Nataliia Novhorodska, co-founders of UpPro School and the Soft Skills Summit.
The organizers note that the development of soft skills is becoming increasingly important amid the spread of artificial intelligence technologies and changing labor market demands.
According to a World Economic Forum forecast, approximately 39% of the professional skills required for work will change by 2030. Among the competencies expected to grow in importance the fastest are analytical thinking, resilience, adaptability, creativity, leadership, and social influence.
For Ukraine, the relevance of this issue is also linked to labor shortages, the integration of veterans and internally displaced persons into the labor market, the potential return of Ukrainians from abroad, the need to develop management teams, and the implementation of AI tools in business processes.
Among the announced speakers for the Soft Skills Summit 2026 are Andriy Fedoriv, founder of Fedoriv Group; Richard E. Boyatzis (U.S.), communications expert and TED speaker Julian Treasure (UK), SoftServe’s Senior Vice President of HR Renta Delporte, Advanter Group Chairman Andriy Dligach, PwC Ukraine Academy Leader Iryna Blinova, business consultant Frank Pucelik (U.S.), Shola Kaye (UK), an expert in communications and People-First culture, and Chen Lizra (Canada), a somatic transformational coach and TED speaker.
The full program and information on participation are available on the Soft Skills Summit 2026 website.
The summit is aimed at business owners, CEOs, team leaders, HR and L&D professionals, business trainers, coaches, psychologists, consultants, and other specialists working in the field of people and organizational development.
As part of the Soft Skills Summit Awards 2026, the best programs will be recognized in five categories: leadership development, talent development, team and corporate culture development, mental health support, and innovation in soft skills training and development.
Projects will be evaluated using a unified methodology developed by the UpPro School Analytical Center in collaboration with the non-governmental organization “Independent Association of Psychology and Coaching” and an independent panel of experts. The organizers state that the main criteria will be the program’s professional value, the quality of its implementation, and its actual impact, regardless of the company’s size.
Detailed information about the award and the terms of participation is available on the Soft Skills Summit Awards 2026 page.
The summit is organized by UpPro School—an international educational center for training and professional development of psychologists, HR and L&D specialists, managers, and other professionals working in the field of people, team, and organizational development. According to the organizers, UpPro School is an accredited CPD provider in the United Kingdom; over 150,000 participants have taken part in the center’s educational events, and more than 8,000 students have completed professional training.
For “Open4Business” readers, the promo code Open4Business is available, offering a 10% discount on tickets to the Soft Skills Summit 2026. The promo code is valid through September 11, 2026.
For partnership inquiries, contact Svitlana Chaurova at partnerships@softskills-summit.com.
Open4Business is the official media partner of the event
Ukrainian defense startup Swarmer, which went public on the Nasdaq in March of this year (ticker SWMR), reported in its financial statement that in the second quarter of 2026, its net loss increased from $1.6 million in the same period of 2025 to $7.3 million, while revenue rose from $138,200 to $216,000.
“The second quarter of 2026 was our first full quarter as a public company and a period of significant progress across all areas of our business. We successfully attracted new customers and made progress in implementing projects to deploy our solutions on various unmanned platforms, while continuing to invest in the team and technologies necessary to ensure future growth,” the press release quotes company co-founder Alex Fink as saying.
According to the report, the company’s gross profit for the second quarter of 2026 was $183,600, compared to $82,000 in April–June 2025. This growth was primarily driven by licensing revenue recognized under the SkyKnight program.
It is noted that Swarmer’s operating expenses for this reporting period totaled $7.5 million, compared to $854,800 a year ago.
“This increase is primarily due to investments in personnel, engineering development, product creation, and platform integration capabilities, as well as higher expenses for consulting, legal, and professional services related to the company’s operations as a public entity,” the company noted.
Operating expenses for the second quarter of 2026 also included, among other things, approximately $1.2 million in non-cash stock-based compensation expenses and certain one-time expenses for equipment purchases, which are not expected to recur on a regular basis.
The report added that during the second quarter of this year, the company billed drone manufacturer SkyKnight $1.5 million. Specifically, $0.2 million was recognized as revenue, $0.1 million was recorded as deferred revenue, and the remaining amount was recorded as an advance payment on the balance sheet.
The company noted that as of the end of June 2026, cash and cash equivalents had increased to $25.3 million from $9.3 million as of December 31, 2025.
Swarmer explains that this growth was driven by approximately $16 million raised from its initial public offering (IPO), $8.8 million raised under a share-for-equity financing facility, and $3.5 million from the sale of Series A-1 convertible preferred shares.
In April–June of this year, Swarmer also signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the technology company Autonomous Power Corporation (Powerus) to explore the potential integration of Swarmer’s battle-proven software with Powerus’s autonomous aerial and maritime platforms.
The company’s core areas of activity include autonomous swarm coordination, integration of multi-domain unmanned systems, AI-based collaborative autonomy, and software for commanding and controlling distributed robotic operations, according to the press release. In addition, the company’s clients include drone manufacturers that license Swarmer’s software for integration with their hardware platforms.
As previously reported, Swarmer posted a net loss of $4.5 million for January–March 2026, compared to $0.7 million for the same period in 2025. Revenue fell to $20,300 from $110,700, while operating expenses rose to $4.5 million from $0.8 million.
The company was founded by Serhiy Kuprienko and Alex Fink in May 2023. Its registered headquarters and marketing and sales office are in Austin, Texas, USA, while its engineering divisions are split between offices in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Warsaw, Poland. The company’s holding structure includes “subsidiary” companies in Ukraine, Poland, and Estonia.
Prior to the IPO, Kuprienko held a 27.4% stake and Fink held 15.1%, while other shareholders included Theseus Capital Partners—where Philip Wagenheim, a member of the board of directors, serves as managing partner—with 22%, D3 Fund (Evelyn Buchacki) with 10.1%, RG.AI Technologies, led by Charles Eberle von Sexi, held 14%, Green Flag Fund I held 5.3%, and Radius Fund I held 6.9%
Swarmer’s revenue in 2025 fell to $0.31 million from $0.33 million a year earlier, while its net loss increased to $8.53 million from $2.07 million.
According to Fixygen, major Bitcoin miners are accelerating the repurposing of some of their energy facilities and infrastructure into data centers for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing amid a deteriorating Bitcoin mining economy, Cointelegraph reports.
In this new model, the miners’ key asset is not ASIC equipment—which is unsuitable for AI computing—but rather access to electricity, substations, cooling systems, permits, and ready-to-use sites. It is precisely the shortage of grid-connected power that has become one of the main constraints on the development of AI data centers. The total capacity of AI data centers worldwide reached 29.6 GW by the end of 2025, whereas in 2022 it was less than 1 GW.
Publicly traded mining companies have already concluded a number of major deals in the AI and HPC segments. In particular, in November 2025, IREN signed a five-year agreement with Microsoft for GPU cloud services worth approximately $9.7 billion for a 750-MW campus in Texas. Hut 8 signed a 15-year, $7 billion contract with Fluidstack for the River Bend facility in Louisiana, while Core Scientific expanded its agreement with CoreWeave to $10.2 billion over 12 years.
According to CoinShares, public mining companies have already announced contracts in the fields of AI and high-performance computing totaling more than $70 billion. Companies with such agreements are valued significantly higher by the market: their price-to-earnings ratio for the last 12 months stands at 12.3, compared to 5.9 for miners that remain primarily focused on Bitcoin mining.
Analysts estimate that the share of AI revenue among public mining companies could rise to approximately 70% by the end of 2026, compared to about 30% in the first quarter. This trend is effectively transforming some mining companies into infrastructure operators for the AI market.
Pressure on traditional mining has intensified due to declining margins. According to JPMorgan’s estimates, the average cost of mining a single Bitcoin is about $78,000, and approximately 20% of miners are operating at a loss. Based on current prices, Bitcoin is trading at around $62,500, which is below the estimated average cost of production.
At the same time, the transition to AI is not cheap. According to CoinShares, a typical crypto mining infrastructure costs $700,000 to $1 million per 1 MW, while liquid-cooled AI facilities may require $8–15 million per 1 MW. This increases companies’ debt burden and makes them dependent on large clients—hyperscalers.
For the market, this signals a shift in investment logic within the mining sector. Whereas Bitcoin price, hash rate, and electricity costs were previously the main factors, long-term contracts with AI clients, access to capital, and the ability to quickly repurpose facilities for GPU infrastructure are now becoming increasingly important for some companies.
Publicly traded Bitcoin miners are under pressure following the halving due to the reduction in block rewards, high network difficulty, and Bitcoin price volatility. Expansion into AI and HPC allows them to diversify their revenue, but at the same time shifts their business into the capital-intensive data center segment, where debt, facility commissioning timelines, and customer concentration remain key risks.
AI, BITCOIN, DATA CENTER, HPC, MINING
The current investment boom around artificial intelligence may slow sharply if the expected return from the technology turns out to be lower than forecasts, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) warns in its new annual economic report.
According to Experts Club, optimism around AI has become one of the factors that supported the global economy and financial markets in recent months. Investments in semiconductors, data centers and energy infrastructure have grown, while large technology companies have become one of the main drivers of capital expenditures.
However, it is precisely the scale and speed of this process that create new risks. BIS compares the current AI boom with previous technological investment cycles — the construction of canals in the 1830s, the railway boom in Great Britain in the 1840s, electrification in the late 1920s and the dot-com boom of the late 1990s.
The common feature of these periods was that a real technological breakthrough attracted more capital than commercial returns could justify. As a result, such booms ended with a reversal of investment and a downturn that affected not only individual companies but also the economy as a whole.
According to BIS, the five largest hyperscalers — major providers of cloud and computing capacity — may spend more than $1 trillion on AI-related capital investments in 2025-2026. These commitments are already outpacing companies’ profits and free cash flow, which is why part of the financing is being raised through debt markets.
BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos, quoted by The Wall Street Journal, said that competition for future market share may have led to excessive investment in AI. If the technology does not deliver the expected return, the sector may prove vulnerable, and the current investment boom may abruptly come to an end.
BIS is particularly concerned not only about the volume of investments itself, but also about how they are financed. This concerns the debt of hyperscalers, AI laboratories, equipment suppliers, construction and engineering contractors involved in creating data centers, energy capacity and other infrastructure.
If the largest customers slow down or stop capital expenditures, companies in the supply chain may face a sharp drop in revenue and difficulties servicing debt. This may increase pressure on fixed-income markets, corporate bonds and private credit.
BIS emphasizes that this is not about denying the long-term potential of artificial intelligence. On the contrary, AI may increase productivity in the economy, but the transition to this model is accompanied by uncertainty: it is still unclear how quickly companies will be able to introduce the technology into real production processes and monetize it on a scale sufficient to justify current investments.
Another risk is related to infrastructure constraints. The development of AI is already facing shortages of electricity, network equipment, powerful semiconductors and opportunities for rapid construction of data centers. These constraints may increase the cost of projects and at the same time intensify overinvestment if companies seek to secure capacity in advance through long-term contracts.
For the financial system, the key threat is that possible disappointment in the return from AI may coincide with already existing vulnerabilities — high valuations of technology company stocks, rising debt, activity in the non-bank financial sector and increased market sensitivity to changes in interest rate expectations.
In this scenario, the AI boom may turn from a source of growth into a factor of financial instability. First, there may be a decline in capital investment and a fall in orders in the infrastructure chain, then a deterioration in the position of borrowers, a widening of credit spreads and a revaluation of AI-related assets.
For businesses and investors, the main conclusion of BIS is that technological progress does not cancel financial discipline. Even if artificial intelligence really becomes one of the key technologies of the coming decade, this does not guarantee that all current investments will pay off, or that all companies participating in the race will remain resilient.
BIS, or the Bank for International Settlements, is an international financial organization headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. The bank was established in 1930 and is considered one of the oldest international financial institutions. Its main task today is to promote global monetary and financial stability through cooperation among central banks, research, statistics, analytical reports and support for international financial standards. BIS is often called the “bank for central banks” because it works primarily with central banks and international financial organizations.
Under a memorandum between the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development of Ukraine and the Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture, and with the support of the flagship project “Movement Without Barriers,” a team of researchers has developed a pilot AI accessibility consultant in ChatGPT.
The tool helps users quickly obtain basic answers with references to DBN standards, which, in particular, regulate issues of inclusivity and accessibility, as well as advice for specific spaces or situations.
The AI consultant does not replace architects and accessibility experts, but it can serve as a convenient first step to get oriented, verify solutions, or prepare for working with specialists.
“For me, the topic of accessibility isn’t an abstract policy, but a personal story. My dad is a veteran with a disability who uses a wheelchair, and every day I see the barriers he faces. That is why the launch of the AI accessibility consultant is an important step toward making spaces in Ukraine truly accessible, not just ‘on paper.’” — Artem Goncharenko, Accessibility Ambassador at the Ministry of Education and Science
This approach is intended to make the process of creating an accessible environment more systematic, consistent, and understandable for communities, businesses, and everyone who works with public spaces.
The AI consultant is constantly updated with materials and technical data. The project is coordinated by the KNUBA Veterans Institute and the KNUBA Expert Working Group on Accessibility. If you have any questions while using the tool, please contact us at: veterano@knuba.edu.ua.
The materials generated by the AI Consultant are for informational purposes only. It is recommended to verify the information in accordance with current regulations and consult with specialists if necessary.
The use of artificial intelligence has already become an everyday practice for most students and employees; however, in the labor market over the coming years, the key competitive advantage will remain not technical but human skills — communication, leadership, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and the ability to work with people. This was the conclusion reached by participants in the press conference on the topic “Higher education and MBA education in the era of artificial intelligence. Which professions and skills will remain with humans?”, which took place at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Wednesday.
As Director of the Center for Business Education and Advanced Training of the Institute of Psychology and Entrepreneurship Maria Furman reported, the study, conducted on the basis of cooperation between students and business, covered more than 250 respondents from the fields of law, HR, IT, consulting, marketing, management, foreign economic activity, education, sales, and finance.
“Currently, more than 97% of respondents already use artificial intelligence in work or everyday life, and more than 50% turn to it at least once a day. The most widespread tools turned out to be ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, and Copilot, while the main usage scenarios were explaining complex information, writing and editing texts, generating ideas, translation, data analysis, and preparation of summaries,” she noted during the presentation of the study “The Use of AI in Work and Everyday Life.”
At the same time, according to Furman, the spread of AI does not mean an automatic increase in trust in its answers. She drew attention to the fact that about 30% of daily functions are already being replaced by such tools; however, the largest share of respondents assessed the level of trust in AI answers as moderate — information can be trusted only on condition of verification. More than 50% of respondents always verify generated answers, another 33% do so if the information looks suspicious, and 13% do so when it concerns especially important work. In addition, more than 30% of respondents very often encountered distortion of information, while another 53.6% reported that such cases had happened to them several times.
“According to estimates by the World Economic Forum, by 2030 more than 40% of skills in the world will change, and this means a need for rapid retraining of both current employees and students. She emphasized that higher education must not simply familiarize young people with digital tools, but rebuild approaches to learning in such a way as to prepare specialists capable of working together with AI, rather than mechanically relying on it,” the expert stressed.
According to her, artificial intelligence has already become part of education and business, but its effect lies not in the complete replacement of humans, but in the transformation of their functions.
“That is precisely why analytical thinking, communication, adaptability, people management, emotional intelligence, and creativity are of particular value today,” Furman stressed.
She added that AI will not be able to displace managers, psychologists, HR specialists, communications managers, teachers, mentors, as well as those responsible for strategy and team development, since in these professions human trust, leadership, empathy, and the ability to work with context remain decisive.
For her part, Doctor of Economics, Professor, Vice-Rector for Scientific-Pedagogical and Educational Work of the Institute of Psychology and Entrepreneurship Iraida Zaitseva emphasized that even the most powerful algorithms cannot replace a leader, since they are devoid of consciousness, creativity, and moral reflection. She recalled that a machine can advise cutting staff for the sake of higher profit, but is not capable of assessing the social, ethical, and even geopolitical consequences of such a decision.
“Artificial intelligence is a powerful engine, but only a human should be the pilot who knows where and why they are flying. We teach students not simply to use the tool, but to validate decisions, critically treat the algorithm’s ‘black box,’ and bear personal responsibility for the result. At the institute, AI is allowed to be used as an auxiliary means for structuring material or searching for ideas; however, the student is obliged to indicate the fact of its use, verify sources, and be responsible for the content of the work, otherwise this may be regarded as academic dishonesty,” Zaitseva noted.
CEO of Capolavoro Group (Brazil), lecturer at the Brazilian AMF institute, and investor in technology startups Wesley Lacerda focused attention on the risks of the improper use of artificial intelligence in business. In his assessment, the main danger lies not only in the technology as such, but in the gradual cognitive weakening of a person, when the user becomes accustomed to transferring their own memory, analytical abilities, speech, and even elementary ability to make independent decisions to the machine. In his presentation, he separately named cognitive deterioration, decline of intelligence, weakening of the ability for reflection, and loss of social skills as the main risks of the broad implementation of AI.
“Artificial intelligence should be used as a tool for data analytics, not as a replacement for human thinking. When a person ceases to understand what stands behind the machine’s answer, they lose their own cognitive abilities, and together with them, the ability to make independent decisions,” Lacerda noted during his presentation.
He also drew attention to the fact that the new wave of automation is generating demand first of all for AI analysts, AI engineers, specialists in AI Ops, and algorithmic audit, and not only and not so much simply for IT specialists. However, even in these roles, what remains decisive is the human understanding of what is being done and for what purpose, and not only the ability to write the correct prompt for the machine.
For her part, 3S Agency recruiter Sofia Vorushko emphasized that in the hiring sphere, artificial intelligence creates an illusion of objectivity, but still cannot replace a live recruiter. According to her, candidates are increasingly better prepared for interviews with the help of AI, use correct wording and socially desirable answers; however, the algorithm is not capable of fully reading non-verbal signals, understanding a person’s motivation, their real experience, and their fit with the culture of a specific company. She gave the example of two seemingly identical executive assistant vacancies, for which in practice completely different candidates were needed due to the different management styles of the managers.
“Today the market is evaluating an employee less and less only by hard skills and more and more by soft skills. Communication, resilience, flexibility, adaptability, leadership, and the ability to build relationships are becoming critically important, because they are the hardest to automate,” Vorushko added.
She referred to global estimates according to which 63% of employers call the shortage of soft skills a barrier to business development, 67% of companies are looking for flexibility and adaptability, 61% — leadership and social influence, while demand for social and emotional skills will grow by another 24% by 2030. According to the recruiter, currently 75% of an employee’s long-term success depends specifically on soft skills, while hard skills account for only about 20%.
At the same time, Director of LLC “Formatsiya” Mykola Hoi noted that for a business built on communication with clients, partners, dealers, manufacturers, and suppliers, the direct transfer of decisions to AI is extremely limited. According to him, in his company, which operates in the field of solar energy, about 95% of working time is precisely work with people, and therefore template algorithms are not capable of fully replacing live contact either in sales, in team selection, or in the development of marketing solutions.
“In business, artificial intelligence can be used, but only if its limits are understood very clearly. Founding a business, selecting a team, marketing, sales, work with the client, and rapid decision-making in a changing environment remain the zone of human responsibility, because here what is needed is not templates, but knowledge, experience, and understanding of another person,” Hoi stressed.
He added that the use of AI in HR processes can lead to mistakes if a company tries to assess candidates only by formal features, without giving a person the opportunity to reveal their potential in live communication.
Separately, the participants noted that the Institute of Psychology and Entrepreneurship is focusing on specialties that, in the opinion of the organizers, are least susceptible to automation: personnel management, communicative management, and psychology. The institution reported that the cost of bachelor’s studies is UAH 42 thousand per year, and at the college — UAH 28 thousand per year; cooperation was also announced with partners in the Baltic countries, as well as in Poland, the UAE, and Brazil, where students can undergo internships. Thanks to the ontological approach, which helps develop the personality, and the combination of psychology with up-to-date knowledge from business practitioners, the institute’s students comprehensively develop personal and professional skills. This helps them become high-level managers and not be dependent on technologies. This level of training allows students, starting from the second year, to work in business projects in their professional specialty.
Summing up the discussion, the experts agreed that Ukrainian higher education and MBA programs can no longer ignore artificial intelligence, but also should not make it an end in itself. It is not about a struggle between human and machine, but about a new distribution of roles, in which AI takes over routine, analytical, and technical functions, while strategy, ethics, creativity, empathy, team management, and responsibility for decisions remain with humans. It is precisely these qualities, in the opinion of the event participants, that will determine a specialist’s competitiveness in the next 5–10 years.
AI, EDUCATION, Formatsiya, HR, INSTITUTE OF PSYCHOLOGY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP, IRAIDA ZÁITSEVA; CAPOLAVORO GROUP, LEARNING, MARIA FURMAN, MYKOLA HOI, RECRUITING, SOFÍA VORUSHKO, WESLEY LACERDA; 3S AGENCY
