• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants to partner with Silicon Valley.
• Zelenskyy said the tech hub's AI skills and Ukraine's wartime drone experience could be "powerful."
• Ukraine has built a drone arsenal that's captivated the world as it fights Russia's invasion.

Ukraine has experience fighting and defending itself using drones. American tech companies have AI firepower. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the combination of the two could be world-changing.

"American technological companies have a lot of different interesting AI technologies that we don't have. And we have a lot of things that they don't have because of our experience on the battlefield," Zelenskyy said on CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "I think this cooperation can be huge and the most powerful in the world."

Ukraine, out of necessity, has built an arsenal of drone tech and anti-drone tech on a shoestring budget, captivating the global defense industry as it's largely held the line — despite its underdog status — since Russia launched its full-scale invasion over four years ago.

Ukraine said three types of homegrown drones allowed it to strike in the vicinity of Moscow earlier this month, and that it had developed a fixed-wing mid-range attack drone that's helped it strike in areas Russia once deemed safe. It's learned valuable lessons in the process, like the need for drone units to always be on the move and for their command centers to be buried underground to protect them.

The AI craze in the United States, meanwhile, coupled with a Defense Department eager to develop new autonomous military technology, is fueling the growth of a Silicon Valley defense tech industry. Companies like Anduril, led by Palmer Luckey, who built the Oculus virtual reality headset that Facebook bought in 2014, have raised billions to develop new uncrewed weapons systems.

Ukraine has since become an important potential proving ground for some of that new hardware.

Through a state-backed "Test in Ukraine" program launched last year, hundreds of international companies have applied to test drones, counter-drone systems, AI, electronic warfare tools, naval drones, and ground robots in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy on Sunday said he wants to deepen this symbiotic relationship further, and soon. His message to Silicon Valley: Stop talking and start building.

"We need to negotiate already," Zelenskyy said Sunday. "Not to speak about it. Just to take steps and to do it as quick as possible."

• Anduril president Matthew Steckman said that defense tech companies have to "create a monopoly."
• There are only one or two programs in each category that are big enough to sustain a business, Steckman said.
• "If you capture them, you have a business, and if you don't, you have no business," he said on "20VC."

Defense tech is winner-takes-all, according to Andruil's president.

Anduril has quickly become a market leader, spawning a venture capital frenzy. The industry is also notoriously competitive, with companies duking it out for lucrative government contracts.

On the "20VC" podcast, President and Chief Business Officer Matthew Steckman described the company's strategy. They'd need to win in key product categories, he said — and maybe monopolize them.

Every defense product category has one big or two big programs, Steckman said. He used the example of small drones, for which there are "very few" programs that would create enough revenue to maintain a business.

"If you capture them, you have a business, and if you don't, you have no business," Steckman said of these programs.

Defense tech companies must shoot for the moon, he said. It's this "addressable market question" that most companies in the sector get wrong, he said.

"You have to create a monopoly," Steckman said. "We knew that."

Anduril's strategy, then, was to create strong underlying technology that could keep them competitive in multiple markets. The company calls this Lattice, the tech that consumes data, interprets it, and then manipulates robots around it, he said.

Those technologies apply to 20 different markets, Steckman said, each "different parts of the defense apparatus."

It's clearly paid off. The company is reportedly raising its next round at a valuation of $60 billion. Some venture capitalists with FOMO are paying premiums for their shares. One compared it to buying Taylor Swift tickets.

Want to work there? Your best way in might be winning a drone-racing competition. In April, the company will reward one winner with a job and a $500,000 check.

After Steckman posited his theory of monopolization in defense tech, host Harry Stebbings asked: Why, then, are there so many drone companies?

"There will definitely be one winner," Steckman said. "The challenge for investors is actually figuring out which one it is."