After five years of building an edtech company, Nathan Nwachuku, 22, realized that Africa was at a crossroads. The continent is undergoing rapid industrialization, he told TechCrunch. There is money, opportunity, and a young, driven population. He figured, soon enough, the continent was on the “edge of an industrial revolution.”
“At the same time,” he said, he felt the continent still struggled to address what was one of its biggest Achilles heels. “Terrorism and insecurity.” Africa has more terror-related deaths than any region in the world, and it is this problem that could slow down — or even stop completely — the growth of the region, Nwachuku said.
He teamed up with a friend, Maxwell Maduka, 24, and launched Terra Industries, a defense company that designs infrastructure and autonomous systems to help governments and organizations monitor and respond to threats. The company announced Monday that it emerged from stealth with a $11.75 million round led by Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC.
Others in the round include Valor Equity Partners, Lux Capital, SV Angel, and Nova Global. The company previously raised an $800,000 pre-seed round, and Nwachuku said others took much interest in the company after it appeared on CNN. African investors in the company include Tofino Capital, Kaleo Ventures, and DFS Lab.
“The goal is to build Africa’s first defense prime, to build autonomous defense systems and other systems to protect our critical infrastructure and resources from armed attacks,” Nwachuku, the company’s CEO, said. Maduka serves as the company’s CTO.
The team is stacked with military experience: 40% of its engineers held the same role in the Nigerian military; 8VC’s Alex Moore, who specializes in defense investing, is also on the board, and Nigeria’s Vice Air Marshal Ayo Jolasinmi serves as an advisor. Maduka also served as an enginner in the Nigerian Navy and founded a drone company at 19.
The company, based in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, took a multi-domain approach to product development, considering how to protect critical infrastructure from the ground, water, and air. For the air, the company produces long-range and short-range drones. On the ground, it has surveillance towers and ground drones. The company is still working on developing maritime technology to help protect infrastructure such as offshore rigs and underwater pipelines.
Terra powers its tech with its proprietary software, ArtemisOS, which collects, analyzes, and synthesizes data in real time. Once threats are spotted, they alert response forces (such as security agencies) so they can intercept them. “We want to geofence all of Africa’s critical infrastructure and resources,” Nwachuku said, adding that the problem is not lack of firepower (many African armies already have that).
Instead, it’s a lack of sovereign intelligence, as much of the intelligence that African countries depend on comes from Western powers, China, and Russia.
“We want to take the defense of our continent’s resources and infrastructure into Africa’s own hands,” Nwachuku continued. “We are the first truly Pan-African defense company.”
Terra recently won its first federal contract, though it said it cannot provide more details. The company makes money when governments and commercial customers place orders for Terra systems and then pay an annual fee for data processing and storage. Nwachuku said the company has generated more than $2.5 million in commercial revenue so far and is protecting assets valued at around $11 billion.
Commercial revenue comes from protecting private infrastructure, like gold mines or power plants. Terra said it is protecting at least two hydro power plants and several smaller mines, with most of the company’s clientele coming from Nigeria.
The company hopes to use the fresh capital to help expand and build more defense factories across Africa. It also wants to further expand its software capabilities and grow its AI team. It will open software offices in San Francisco and London, but the company said manufacturing will remain in Africa, with more factories opening across the continent to boost job creation.
“It’s clear Africa today is undergoing what I see as an epic struggle for its very survival,” Nwachuku said. “The only way for us to truly break ourselves from the shackles that have held us back for the last decade or two is ensuring the core resources, the core infrastructures of the continent, are entirely protected.”
