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Nigerian cybersecurity startup Aeon, focused on creating a platform for high-trust organizations to safeguard critical digital infrastructure, has secured $1 million in pre-seed funding led by defense-tech startup Terra Industries. The venture also attracted support from Resilience 17, Flutterwave co-founder and CEO Olugbenga Agboola, Kaleo, DFS Labs, Ajim Capital, and Seedstars.

Aeon intends to utilize the funding to advance its cybersecurity offerings, bolster business development, and transform existing pilots with financial services and cloud infrastructure companies into commercial ventures.

The investment coincides with African businesses and governments grappling with an escalating cyber threat landscape. INTERPOL has estimated that cyber incidents across the continent resulted in over $3 billion in financial losses between 2019 and 2025, with artificial intelligence (AI) now linked to 55% of reported cybercrimes in Africa, according to INTERPOL's 2026 assessment.

Aeon's co-founders, Samuel Ogbonyomi, Ben Eluan, and Alex Idowu, began developing the platform in February 2026 as a PipeOps product. Aeon aims to provide a cybersecurity and compliance platform for high-trust organizations in sectors such as commercial banking and finance, energy, oil and gas, and mobility. The company offers two product suites: Aeon Console, a web-based platform consolidating core security operations, and Aeon Edge, which resides within a customer's network to provide visibility into connected devices and allow for isolation of compromised devices.

Aeon's business model is primarily based on annual licensing, with the Console offering three tiers for customers to select specific security functions.

The $1 million funding also establishes a commercial relationship between Aeon and Terra, with plans to pursue some of Terra's corporate and government contracts together. Terra will handle the physical security component of contracts, while Aeon will secure the customer's digital assets. Customers will sign contracts with Terra, and where it includes a cybersecurity component, Terra can extend that contract to Aeon. Ogbonyomi stated that Aeon is currently evaluating some of Terra's contracts for potential fit.

The partnership between Terra and Aeon emerged from an existing relationship between the two companies, as the PipeOps team had previously managed some of Terra's internal infrastructure for roughly two years. Aeon and Terra initiated a pilot earlier in the year, and Aeon operates a cybersecurity market featuring global security vendors and African companies, with the long-term goal of building a cybersecurity infrastructure layer for critical organizations across the Global South.