Terra Industries Backs $1m Pre-seed Round in Cybersecurity Startup Aeon

By Adedapo Adesanya

Nigerian defence technology firm, Terra Industries, has led a $1 million pre-seed funding round for Aeon, a Nigerian startup developing a cyberdefence platform for high-trust organisations.

The round also attracted investment from Resilience17, the early-stage investment firm founded by Flutterwave Chief Executive Officer, Mr Olugbenga Agboola, as well as DFS Labs, Kaleo Ventures, Seedstars and Ajim Capital.

Aeon was founded by Mr Samuel Ogbonyomi, Mr Ben Eluan and Mr Alex Idowu, following their experience building cloud infrastructure solutions at PipeOps, which is now focused on cyberdefence and sovereignty solutions for critical infrastructure across the Global South.

The startup is developing a suite of cybersecurity products, including Aeon Edge, a hardware device designed to secure networks and data at the perimeter, and Aeon Console, an AI-powered cyberdefence and compliance platform that monitors and remediates vulnerabilities across code, cloud and endpoints.

The relationship between Aeon and Terra Industries began as a working partnership before the defence technology company decided to invest in the startup.

The two companies also share several investors, including DFS Labs, Kaleo Ventures and Resilience17.

Although Terra Industries is primarily a hardware company, Mr Ogbonyomi said its involvement in the development of Aeon Edge would remain limited, while Aeon could occasionally draw on Terra’s expertise to improve the product.

“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,” Mr Ogbonyomi said.

Aeon said it has commenced pilots with financial institutions and cloud infrastructure companies in Nigeria as it seeks to demonstrate the platform’s value.

It also conducted a pilot with Terra Industries earlier this year, following which both companies entered into a joint venture to jointly execute contracts for corporate and government organisations across the Global South.

Mr Nathan Nwachuku, Chief Executive Officer of Terra Industries, said the partnership was aimed at building a broader security infrastructure for organisations across the region.

“We see Aeon becoming the sovereign cyber defence 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,” he said.

Mr Ogbonyomi said Africa’s cybersecurity market presents a significant opportunity, noting that many organisations currently rely on managed services or combine multiple security tools to address their cybersecurity needs.

Aeon is positioning its platform as a more integrated alternative that can protect organisations across on-premises, cloud and hybrid infrastructure.