Defence-tech startup Terra Industries raises $22 million one month after record round

Terra Industries, a Nigerian defence-technology startup that integrates hardware and software by building drones and monitoring locations through proprietary software, has raised an additional $22 million one month after raising $11.8 million in the largest funding round in Africa’s defence tech sector. 

The new round, completed in under two weeks and led by repeat investor Lux Capital, drew follow-on funding from 8VC, Nova Global, and Silent Ventures. New investors include Belief Capital, Tofino Capital, and Resilience17 Capital, founded by Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola, as well as angel investors including Jordan Nel and Hollywood actor Jared Leto. 

The capital will be used to expand manufacturing, accelerate deployments in Nigeria and allied African countries, and hire senior engineering and business leaders across Africa, London, and San Francisco, the company said. 

“Africa is industrialising faster than any other region,” said Nathan Nwachuku, Terra’s 22-year-old co-founder and chief executive officer. “But none of that progress will matter if we don’t solve the continent’s greatest Achilles’ heel, which is insecurity and terrorism.”

Terra’s one-month follow-on raise is unusually fast by African ecosystem standards, especially for such a young startup in a new sector. Most African startups typically take months to years between funding rounds, and many fail to secure follow-on capital.

Terra is now the most-funded African startup operating in the continent’s defence sector, thanks to its unique combination of hardware and software products. Terra’s pitch is that security for African infrastructure needs to be built differently: vertically integrated, locally manufactured, and tightly coupled with software that can autonomously detect and respond to threats across vast terrain. In effect, it wants to become a “defence prime,” a role that companies like Anduril Industries and Palantir now play in the US.

Africa holds about 30% of the world’s critical mineral reserves and spends $100 billion annually on infrastructure. Much of that investment is concentrated in remote or volatile regions where power plants, mines, and transport corridors face sabotage, illegal mining, and militant attacks. 

Governments and operators often rely on imported security systems that can be costly to maintain and expose them to supply-chain and geopolitical risks. Terra is positioning itself as a local alternative, building what it describes as Africa’s first vertically integrated defence technology prime focused on autonomous surveillance and response systems tailored to the continent’s terrain.

Founded in 2024 by Nwachuku and Maxwell Maduka, 24, Terra designs and manufactures long- and mid-range autonomous drones, sentry towers, and unmanned ground vehicles linked through its proprietary software platform, ArtemisOS. 

The system enables real-time threat detection and coordinated response across land, air, and maritime environments. The company says it currently secures infrastructure assets valued at about $11 billion and has signed contracts worth tens of millions of dollars across multiple African countries.