Just a month after raising $11.75 million in a round led by Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC, African defensetech Terra Industries has announced that it has raised an additional $22 million in funding, led by Lux Capital.
Nathan Nwachuku, 22, and Maxwell Maduka, 24, founded Terra Industries in 2024 to design infrastructure and autonomous systems to help African nations monitor and respond to threats.
Terrorism remains one of the biggest threats in Africabut much of the security intelligence its nations rely on comes from Russia, China or the West. In January, CEO Nwachuku said his goal was to build “Africa’s first defense frontline, to create autonomous defense systems and other systems to protect our critical infrastructure and resources from armed attacks.”
At the time, Terra had just won its first federal contract. The company has government and commercial customers, and Nwachuku said Terra had already generated more than $2.5 million in commercial revenue and protected about $11 billion worth of assets.
He said this round of expansion came quickly because of “strong momentum.” Other investors in the round include 8VC, Nova Global and Resiliience17 Capital, which was founded by Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola. Nwachuku said investors have seen “faster than expected traction” in terms of deals and partnerships, which has created an urgency to catch up and increase their engagement. The round was raised in less than two weeks, bringing the company’s total funding to $34 million.
The widespread increase is not surprising. After all, building a defense company isn’t cheap. By comparison, Anduril has raised more than $2.5 billion in funding. ShieldAI has raised about $1 billion in equity; drone maker Skydio has raised about $740 million, and the maritime autonomous shipbuilding company Saronic, has raised about $830 million.
Since January, Nwachuku said the company has begun expanding into other yet-to-be-announced African countries (Terra is based in Nigeria) and has secured more government and commercial contracts, including AIC Steel, with more to be revealed this year.
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The partnership with AIC Steel allows Terra to establish a joint manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia focused on manufacturing surveillance infrastructure and security systems. “It is our first major manufacturing expansion outside of Africa,” he said.
“The priority is to work with countries where terrorism and infrastructure security are major national concerns,” Nwachuku added, citing those in sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel region in particular. He said many of these companies have not only lost billions in infrastructure but also thousands of lives over the past few decades.
“We’re focused on targeting large economies where the need for infrastructure security is urgent and where our solutions can have a meaningful impact. That’s how we’re thinking about expansion.”
