Terra Industries, the Nigerian autonomous-systems startup founded just last year, has closed an additional $18 million to bring its total seed funding to $52 million — an unusually large seed round for an African defence-technology company by any measure. The raise was reported by Business Insider Africa, which noted that existing backers 8VC, Silent Ventures, Nova Global, Belief Capital, and SV Angel all participated, joined by new investors Norleo Space Investments and Grant Gordon.
The company was founded in 2024 by Nathan Nwachuku, 22, and Maxwell Maduka, 24, both operating out of Abuja. That two founders still in their early twenties have pulled $52 million at seed stage — without a Series A label — signals how seriously institutional investors are treating African-origin defence and security technology, a sector that has historically attracted almost no local venture capital.
The latest $18 million tranche follows a $34 million raise announced in February, when Terra said it was scaling production of drones, surveillance towers, and unmanned ground vehicles. The company develops autonomous aerial, land, and maritime systems, and says its products already guard critical infrastructure — power plants, mines, and other assets — worth roughly $11 billion across multiple African countries. That figure is self-reported, but it provides a concrete sense of the operational footprint the company has built in under 18 months of existence.
The headline use of the new capital is Terra's Pax-2 factory in Ghana, scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of 2025. At 34,000 square feet, it is more than twice the size of the company's existing 15,000-square-foot flagship factory in Abuja. The company projects Pax-2 will produce up to 50,000 aerial systems per year by 2028 — a target, not current output — which would make it Africa's largest drone manufacturing facility by the company's own reckoning. Ghana's role is specifically production; Nigeria retains the founding team and original factory.
Beyond manufacturing, the funding will also support the opening of Terra's first international office in London, and the company has signalled further geographic expansion into the Gulf, South America, and South Asia. The London office suggests Terra is positioning for government and enterprise procurement relationships in markets where defence contracting requires a credible Western presence, even as it keeps its manufacturing base on the continent — a deliberate split that mirrors how several Israeli and South Korean defence-tech firms structured their early international growth.
The competitive context matters here. Africa receives a disproportionately small share of global defence-technology investment, meaning that most governments and infrastructure operators on the continent have historically sourced aerial surveillance and security systems from foreign suppliers — primarily Chinese, Israeli, or Turkish manufacturers. Terra's pitch is locally built alternatives at scale, with the Ghana factory designed to close the gap between ambition and production capacity. The $11 billion in infrastructure assets the company claims to be protecting already gives it reference clients that any serious procurement officer would want to inspect.
For investors, the round's composition tells its own story. 8VC — the San Francisco firm co-founded by Joe Lonsdale — has been building a defence-tech portfolio and its continued participation through a top-up round suggests confidence in Terra's trajectory rather than a one-time bet. The addition of Norleo Space Investments alongside the existing syndicate broadens the strategic value of the cap table into adjacent aerospace and space-adjacent domains.
Why it matters: Terra Industries is the clearest signal yet that African-founded defence-tech companies can raise institutional capital at a scale — $52 million at seed, before a Series A — that was previously unimaginable on the continent; when Pax-2 opens, the question shifts from whether Africa can build drone infrastructure to whether Terra can execute a 50,000-unit production ramp in three years.