Aeon, a Nigerian cybersecurity startup, has raised $1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by defence-tech company Terra Industries. Resilience 17, the venture fund founded by Flutterwave co-founder and CEO Olugbenga Agboola, along with Kaleo, DFS Labs, Ajim Capital, and Seedstars, also participated in the round.
Aeon plans to use the funding to advance its cybersecurity products, strengthen business development and convert existing pilot programmes with financial services and cloud infrastructure companies into commercial deployments.
The funding comes as businesses and governments across Africa face increasing cybersecurity risks. INTERPOL estimated that cyber incidents across the continent resulted in more than $3 billion in financial losses between 2019 and 2025, while its 2026 assessment linked artificial intelligence to 55% of reported cybercrimes in Africa.
READ ALSO: MASTERCARD AND TRIP.COM UNVEIL AI-POWERED TRAVEL BOOKING REVOLUTION
“Almost every operator we worked with had a dozen security tools and no single view of their exposure,” Samuel Ogbonyomi, co-founder and chief executive officer of Aeon, said in a statement. “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.”
Ogbonyomi, Ben Eluan and Alex Idowu began developing Aeon in February 2026 through PipeOps, a cloud infrastructure management platform. The startup is focused on providing cyber defence and compliance solutions for high-trust organisations across sectors including banking and finance, energy, oil and gas, and mobility.
“We’re selling to high-trust organisations; it’s very important that we’re able to partner with highly networked individuals that ultimately have access to decision-makers across various industries,” Ogbonyomi said
Aeon’s platform consists of two main product suites. Aeon Console brings together security functions such as risk detection, vulnerability management, policy enforcement, response and evidence collection, while Aeon Edge operates within customers’ networks to provide visibility into connected devices and enable security teams to isolate compromised equipment. The company primarily uses an annual licensing model, with Console offered in modular tiers.
The investment also establishes a commercial relationship between Aeon and Terra Industries, which plans to work with the cybersecurity startup on selected corporate and government contracts. Under the proposed arrangement, Terra will provide physical security while Aeon handles the cybersecurity component.
“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,” said Nathan Nwachuku, chief executive officer of Terra Industries. “That is our goal, where Terra handles physical security, and Aeon handles digital and cyber security.”
The relationship between the companies developed from an earlier infrastructure management engagement, with the PipeOps team having worked with Terra for about two years before the cybersecurity collaboration began. Aeon is now assessing some of Terra’s existing contracts for potential cybersecurity opportunities, while the two companies continue exploring their joint venture plans.
Aeon operates in a competitive cybersecurity market that includes global companies such as Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and Check Point, alongside African cybersecurity firms including Kenya’s Serianu and Morocco’s Nucleon Security. The startup’s longer-term ambition is to build a cybersecurity infrastructure layer for critical organisations across the Global South.
“We’ve been building in stealth for quite some time, but sequel to this announcement, you’re going to be seeing more of this,” Ogbonyomi said. “We’re going to be driving a lot of thought leadership and educating the region on some of the most critical issues we should be paying attention to.”
