Aeon, a Nigerian cybersecurity startup building a platform to help high-trust organisations protect critical digital infrastructure, has raised $1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by defence-tech startup Terra Industries.

Resilience 17, the venture fund founded by Flutterwave co-founder and chief executive officer Olugbenga Agboola, also participated in the round, alongside Kaleo, DFS Labs, Ajim Capital, and Seedstars.

Aeon will use the capital to develop its cybersecurity products, expand business development, and convert existing pilots with financial services and cloud infrastructure companies into commercial deployments.

The raise comes as African businesses and governments confront a widening cyber threat landscape. INTERPOL estimated that cyber incidents across the continent caused more than $3 billion in financial losses between 2019 and 2025, according to the INTERPOL Africa Cyberthreat Assessment Report. In its 2026 assessment, the organisation reported that artificial intelligence (AI) is now linked to 55% of reported cybercrimes in Africa.

"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 building Aeon in February 2026 through PipeOps, a cloud infrastructure management platform. Ogbonyomi described PipeOps as the parent entity and Aeon as a PipeOps product. The company is developing what it describes as a cyber defence and compliance platform for high-trust organisations in commercial banking and finance, energy, oil and gas, and mobility sectors.

"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 told TechCabal.

Aeon offers two product suites. Aeon Console is a web-based platform that consolidates core security operations, including risk detection, vulnerability management, policy enforcement, response, and evidence gathering. Aeon Edge sits within a customer's network, giving security teams visibility into connected devices and allowing them to isolate compromised devices.

The startup's business model is primarily based on annual licensing. Aeon Console is modular and comes in three tiers, allowing customers to select the security functions they need rather than paying for the entire platform.

The investment also gives Aeon a commercial relationship with Terra, which closed a $52 million seed round in August. The two companies plan to form a commercial joint venture that will allow them to pursue some of Terra's corporate and government contracts together, with Terra handling physical security and Aeon providing cybersecurity.

"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."

Under the joint venture arrangement, responsibility is divided between the two companies. Terra will handle the physical security component of a contract, while Aeon secures the customer's digital assets. Customers will sign contracts with Terra, and where an agreement includes a cybersecurity component, Terra can extend that work to Aeon, Ogbonyomi said.

Terra has been building out its contract pipeline. On September 4, the company announced $2 million in contracts to deploy 20 Sentry towers and four Iroko drones across lithium mining sites operated by two companies in Nigeria. Ten days later, it announced a separate $1 million contract with Anka Metals to provide security for its Jema'a Resource Project in Kaduna.

Aeon did not say whether it would be involved in either contract, but Ogbonyomi told TechCabal that the startup is assessing some of Terra's contracts for potential fit. "We're already looking at a couple of contracts between now and the end of the fourth quarter, and are hoping to close them in due time," he said. How those discussions resolve, alongside the conversion of Aeon's existing pilots with financial services and cloud infrastructure companies into commercial deployments, will be the near-term milestones to watch as the company steps out of stealth.

The Terra deal grew out of an existing relationship between the two companies. Before Aeon began working with Terra on the cybersecurity product, the PipeOps team had spent roughly two years managing some of Terra's internal infrastructure. That work gave the two companies a basis for exploring how their capabilities could fit together. Aeon said the companies began a pilot in the year.

Aeon also operates a cybersecurity marketplace where global security vendors, including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, and Check Point, alongside African companies such as Kenya's Serianu and Morocco's Nucleon Security, offer specialised products and services. The marketplace runs alongside Aeon's two licensed suites, adding third-party supply to the company's offering.

For Aeon, the longer-term goal 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."