Just a month later raise $11.75 million in one round Led by Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC, African defense technology Terra Industries has announced it has raised an additional $22 million in funding, led by Lux Capital.
Nathan Nwachuku, 22, and Maxwell Maduka, 24, launched Terra Industries in 2024 to design autonomous infrastructure and systems to help African countries 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 infrastructure, build autonomous defense systems and other systems to protect our critical infrastructure and resources against armed attacks.”
At the time, Terra had just won its first federal contract. The company has government and commercial clients, and Nwachuku said Terra has already generated more than $2.5 million in commercial revenue and is protecting assets valued at about $11 billion.
He said this extension round happened quickly due to “strong momentum.” Other investors participating in the round include 8VC, Nova Global and Resilience17 Capital, founded by Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola. Nwachuku said investors have seen “faster than expected traction” on deals and partnerships, which has created urgency to anticipate and increase engagement. The funding round happened in just under two weeks, bringing the company’s total funding to $34 million.
The prolonged increase is not that surprising. After all, building a defense company is expensive. For comparison, Anduril raised more than 2.5 billion dollars in financing; ShieldAI has raised approximately $1 billion in equity capital; drone manufacturer Skydio has raised approximately $740 million, and autonomous naval shipbuilder Saronic, raised around $830 million.
Since January, Nwachuku said the company has started expanding into other African countries (Terra is based in Nigeria) and has secured more government and commercial contracts, including with 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 building surveillance infrastructure and security systems. “This is our first major industrial expansion outside of Africa,” he said.
“The priority is to work with countries where terrorism and infrastructure security are major national concerns,” Nwachuku added, particularly citing those in the sub-Saharan Africa and Sahel region. He added that many of these companies have not only lost billions in infrastructure, but also thousands of lives over the past decades.
“We are focused on targeting large economies where the need for infrastructure security is urgent and where our solutions can make a significant impact. This is how we envision expansion.”
Dominic-Madori Davis is a senior venture capital and startup reporter at TechCrunch. She is based in New York.
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