Palantir Co-Founder Leads $11.8M Investment in Nigerian Drone Startup as African Defense Tech Emerges

The same Silicon Valley investors who built Anduril into a $30 billion defense giant are now betting on a different kind of drone company: one founded by two twenty-somethings in Abuja, Nigeria, that manufactures its systems on the African continent with African engineers. That alone should tell you something about where the smart money thinks the next defense tech growth market actually is.

Terrahaptix Inc., which also operates as Terra Industries, has raised $11.8 million in a funding round led by 8VC, the venture firm founded by Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale. The investment signals that Silicon Valley’s defense tech ecosystem is looking beyond Ukraine and Europe to Africa’s rapidly expanding security crisis, according to Bloomberg.

The Palantir Playbook Comes to West Africa

The investor list reads like a who’s who of the companies that reshaped Pentagon procurement over the past decade. Valor Equity Partners, Lux Capital, SV Angel, Leblon Capital GmbH, Silent Ventures LLC, and Nova Global all participated. Meyer Malka, managing partner of Ribbit Capital, joined as an angel investor.

Here is the connection that matters: Valor and 8VC have both backed Anduril Industries, SpaceX, and Palantir separately. These are the same investors who spotted the autonomous defense technology wave before the Pentagon did. Now they are writing checks to a Nigerian startup that protects hydropower plants and lithium mines.

Alex Moore, who focuses on defense investments at 8VC and serves as a non-executive director at Palantir, joined Terra Industries’ board. That is not a passive investment. That is positioning for Africa to become the next theater where autonomous security systems reshape how governments and corporations protect critical infrastructure.

$11 Billion in Infrastructure Under Drone Protection

Terra Industries already operates at scale. The company says its equipment helps secure infrastructure assets valued at approximately $11 billion across Africa, including hydropower plants in Nigeria and gold and lithium mining operations in Ghana.

Founded in 2024 by Nathan Nwachuku, 22, and Maxwell Maduka, 24, the Abuja-based company produces long and mid-range drones, autonomous sentry towers, and unmanned ground vehicles. What sets Terra apart from Western defense contractors operating in Africa is that the company designs, builds, and manufactures its systems on the continent with a predominantly African engineering team.

“Africa is industrializing faster than any other region, with new mines, refineries and power plants emerging every month,” Nwachuku said in the Bloomberg report. “But none of that progress will matter if we don’t solve the continent’s greatest Achilles’ heel, which is insecurity and terrorism.”

The Security Vacuum That Created This Market

The investment comes as the security situation across West Africa has deteriorated dramatically. Groups including Islamic State and al-Qaeda are gaining ground in Africa along a territory stretching from Mali to Nigeria. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has declared a state of emergency across the regional bloc.

Traditional security solutions have failed to keep pace with the threat. Mining companies, energy producers, and governments are increasingly looking to autonomous surveillance and perimeter defense systems that can cover vast areas without the manpower limitations of conventional security forces.

Terra Industries plans to use the new funding to expand its manufacturing capacity as it moves into cross-border security and counter-terrorism applications. The company represents something unusual in the defense tech landscape: homegrown African capabilities developed by founders who understand local terrain, regulatory environments, and operational requirements in ways that imported Western systems often do not.

DroneXL’s Take

We track defense drone investment patterns closely, and this deal signals a strategic shift that commercial drone operators should watch. The same capital networks that turned Anduril into a $30 billion company and funded the Chaos Industries’ $510 million Series D are now deploying to Africa. That is not charity. That is investors seeing a market the rest of the industry has largely ignored.

The African angle is particularly significant when you consider the broader context. Last November, we covered the State Department’s $150 million investment in Zipline’s African medical drone expansion, which showed Washington recognizing the continent’s drone infrastructure potential. Terra Industries represents the other side of that coin: African-led, African-built defense technology funded by the same investors who shaped the American defense tech renaissance.

The Reuters investigation we covered showing Anduril’s Altius drones crashing during Air Force tests raises legitimate questions about whether Silicon Valley’s defense darlings can actually deliver on their promises. Terra Industries will face the same scrutiny, but with a crucial difference: they are building for the environment they operate in, not trying to adapt American designs to African conditions.

The lithium mining protection angle deserves attention. Africa holds significant lithium reserves essential for electric vehicle batteries. Security for those operations is not just about protecting corporate assets; it is about securing supply chains that Western automakers and battery manufacturers depend on. The investors backing Terra Industries understand that autonomous perimeter security for African mineral extraction sites is critical infrastructure for the global energy transition.

What happens when African founders with local expertise, Silicon Valley capital, and Palantir board connections start competing with Western defense contractors for continental security contracts? We are about to find out.

Editorial Note: This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI to ensure technical accuracy and archive retrieval. All insights, industry analysis, and perspectives were provided exclusively by Haye Kesteloo and our other DroneXL authors, editors, and Youtube partners to ensure the “Human-First” perspective our readers expect.