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Terra Industries has led a $1 million pre-Seed round in Aeon, a Nigerian cybersecurity company building cyber defence tools for Africa and the Global South.
Resilience 17 (Founded by Olugbenga Agboola, co-founder and CEO of Flutterwave), Kaleo, DFS Labs, Ajim Capital, and Seedstars also participated.
“Almost every operator we worked with had a dozen security tools and no single view of their exposure. Attackers move across all of those systems at once. We built Aeon so a bank or a grid operator can see and fix its whole attack surface from one place,” said Samuel Ogbonyomi, co-founder and chief executive officer of Aeon.
Led by Samuel Ogbonyomi, Ben Eluan, and Alex Idowu, Aeon builds cyber defence infrastructure for critical industries across Africa and the Global South.
Its two products — Aeon Edge and Aeon Console, secure networks, code, cloud systems, and endpoints for banks, cloud providers, and infrastructure operators.
Aeon Edge is a device that protects networks and data. Aeon Console is a smart platform that checks for security issues and ensures compliance across software, cloud, and devices.
Together, they provide security teams with a single view of risks and a unified place to address them.
Aeon is focused on important industries in the Global South, starting with Nigeria. Their solutions are designed to address local security challenges and regulations.
They are currently running pilot projects with financial services and cloud companies in Nigeria. The seed funding will help Aeon improve its products, grow its engineering team, and turn these pilots into commercial projects in Nigeria’s financial sector and critical infrastructure.
Earlier this year, Aeon also started a successful pilot with Terra Industries, leading to a partnership. Together, they will work on contracts for businesses and government organizations in the Global South, with Terra handling physical security and Aeon taking care of digital security.
The funds will support Aeon’s build-out of its cyber defense product suite and the rollout of its technology through the new joint venture with Terra, as the two companies begin co-executing contracts for government and corporate clients.
Founded in 2024, Terra develops integrated air, land, and maritime systems powered by ArtemisOS, its unified software platform for large-scale security operations.
The company serves critical sectors including energy, mineral resources, urban infrastructure, maritime assets, border security, and counterterrorism operations. It recently announced plans to open the continent’s largest drone manufacturing facility in Accra, Ghana.
Called Pax-2, the 34,000-square-foot facility will be Terra’s second manufacturing facility and serve as its primary regional defence manufacturing base for drone and counter-drone systems. The new manufacturing facility follows the 15,000-square-foot Pax-1 flagship facility in Abuja, Nigeria.
“We see Aeon becoming the sovereign cyber defense layer for the Global South, where financial institutions, large corporations, governments and militaries run their cyber operations on Aeon’s infrastructure. That is our goal, where Terra handles physical security, and Aeon handles digital and cyber security,” said Nathan Nwachuku, chief executive officer of Terra Industries.
The announcement comes over a month after Terra Industries appointed Ben MacWilliams as Vice President of Strategy, who worked at SpaceX as Director of Starlink Market Access.
