All posts tagged: defense tech

African defensetech Terra Industries, founded by two Gen Zers, raises additional M in a month

African defensetech Terra Industries, founded by two Gen Zers, raises additional $22M in a month

Published by skeptic

Just one month after raising $11.75 million in a round led by Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC, African defensetech Terra Industries announced that it’s raised an additional $22 million in funding, led by Lux Capital. Nathan Nwachuku, 22, and Maxwell Maduka, 24, launched Terra Industries in 2024 to design infrastructure and autonomous systems to help African nations monitor and respond to threats.  Terrorism remains one of the biggest threats in Africa, but much of the security intelligence on which its nations rely on come from Russia, China, or the West. In January, CEO Nwachuku said his goal was to build “Africa’s first defense prime, to build autonomous defense systems and other systems to protect our critical infrastructure and resources from armed attacks.”  At the time, Terra had just won its first federal contract. The company has government and commercial clients, and Nwachuku said Terra had already generated more than $2.5 million in commercial revenue and was protecting assets valued at around $11 billion.  He said this extension round came fast due to “strong momentum.” Other investors in …

Integrate raises M to move defense project management into the 21st century

Integrate raises $17M to move defense project management into the 21st century

Published by skeptic

John Conafay, a veteran of the US Air Force, has spent most of his career leading business development at public and private aerospace companies, including Spire, Astranis, and ABL Space Systems.   At each company, Conafay ran into the same software hurdle: collaborating on government contracts was a logistical mess that forced his teams and their federal counterparts to rely on a tedious back-and-forth of PDFs and Excel files. The bottleneck was always the same—most project management tools like Atlassian’s Jira and Asana simply weren’t secure enough to meet the government’s strict security standards. So, in early 2022, Conafay launched Integrate, a collaboration platform designed specifically to allow private companies, the US Department of Defense, and other government agencies to work jointly on classified, multi-entity projects. Last year, the Seattle-based startup won a $25 million, five-year contract from the US Space Force. That validation from a major agency was one of the reasons Wesley Chan, co-founder and managing partner at FPV Ventures, just led Integrate’s $17 million Series A. Chan, known for early bets on …