African-born AI startup Lua has secured $5.8 million in seed funding, to build an operating system for human-AI agent collaboration in the workplace.
The seed fund marks a significant milestone in the company’s mission to redefine how businesses operate in the age of automation.
The round was led by Africa-focused growth fund Norrsken22, with participation from Flourish Ventures, 20VC, P1 Ventures, Phosphor Capital, Y Combinator, and prominent angel investors including Henri Stern (CEO of Privy), Kaz Nejatian (CEO of Opendoor), and Med Benmansour (CEO of Nuitee).
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Announcing the funding round, the company wrote via a post on LinkedIn,
“Today we’re announcing our $5.8m seed round. When we launched our developer platform in October, we set out to give companies real ownership over their agent outcomes. A way for any business to build the org chart of the future, where humans and agents collaborate seamlessly and agents are managed with the same intentionality as your human team.
“Lua is where companies come to build a truly compounding agent workforce. And it’s starting to get noticed. In Q1, agents on the platform grew 10x, we shipped our first open source releases, and momentum started building globally.”
Also commenting on the funding round, Novitske, General Partner at Norrsken22 Lexi Novitske said,
“We are thrilled to support Lua. The founders fundamentally understand how agent and human workforces need to collaborate to get work done”.
Lua will use the funding to continue to build out its developer community and the Lua Implementation Network, a growing community of independent partners deploying Lua agent workforces in their own markets around the world.
Investors highlighted Lua’s potential to become the foundational layer for AI agent adoption in businesses worldwide, particularly as companies seek practical ways to integrate autonomous agents into daily operations without losing control or incurring massive complexity.
Norrsken22’s leadership of the round underscores growing confidence in Africa-rooted talent building globally relevant AI infrastructure.
Lua’s platform enables businesses both technical and non-technical to rapidly build, deploy, and manage teams of integrated AI agents.
By providing infrastructure, model orchestration, and channel integrations, Lua allows companies to focus on their core business logic while giving them full ownership over their AI outcomes.
The company positions its solution as a full-stack “agent OS” that supports natural language interfaces and one-click deployments, making advanced AI workforce management accessible beyond big tech.
Founded by Lorcan O’Cathain and Stefan Kruger, Lua officially launched its developer platform in October 2025 and has already demonstrated impressive early traction, including rapid revenue growth and deployments with clients across Africa, Asia, the United States, and Europe. Notable early adopters include African fintechs such as Turaco and Umba.
Since launching its agent developer platform, Lua has grown revenue close to 30% week-on-week. In February 2026 alone, more agents were built on Lua than in the entire cumulative period since launch.
As the AI agent space heats up, Lua enters with a clear value proposition: making AI workforces practical, integrable, and owned by the businesses that deploy them.
With strong backers, experienced founders, and proven early momentum, the company is well-positioned to capture a slice of the expanding market for agentic AI tools.
Notably, Lua’s announcement comes at a moment when enterprises are moving beyond simple chatbots toward coordinated teams of specialized AI agents that can handle complex, multi-step workflows.