There's a version of this story where it begins with a pitch deck - the Stanford pedigree, a demo in a conference room somewhere in Menlo Park. That is how most defence-tech companies are born. Terra Industries is not that story. It started in Abuja with two young Nigerians, Nathan Nwachuku and Maxwell Maduka, who founded the company in 2024. Less than two years later, Terra has raised an additional $18 million to close Africa's largest seed round at $52 million - three tranches in eight months - with new investors Norleo Space Investments and angel Grant Gordon joining backers 8VC, Silent Ventures, Nova Global, Belief Capital and SV Angel.
The capital will fund a first international office in London (plus Washington DC and San Francisco presence), expand manufacturing capacity and accelerate deployment across the Global South. Terra develops autonomous systems that help governments and infrastructure operators monitor critical assets - power plants, mines, pipelines - across land, air and maritime environments: long/mid-range and interceptor drones, sentry towers and UGVs connected through its proprietary ArtemisOS platform.
It operates the 15,000 sq ft Pax-1 facility in Abuja; its second factory, Pax-2, is a 34,000 sq ft facility in Ghana described as Africa's largest drone factory, expected to open Q4 2026 with capacity for 50,000 units annually by 2028. The company reports $100 million in active contracts and says its technology protects nationally critical assets worth ~$11 billion across several African countries, and has signed an MoU with Nigeria's DICON for a joint venture on local defence-system production.
CEO Nwachuku: the London office 'puts us in the rooms where global defence decisions are made.' Terra is two years old, and by any honest measure the most consequential African defence-technology company most people outside the continent have not yet heard of.
