Lua AI Startup Raises Ksh748M to Expand Operations in Nairobi

AI startup Lua has secured Ksh748 million in fresh funding as it moves to scale its operations, including expansion in Nairobi and other global markets.  

According to a statement issued to newsrooms on Tuesday, April 21, the investment round was led by Norrsken22, with participation from Flourish Ventures, 20VC, P1 Ventures, Enza Capital, Phosphor Capital, and Y Combinator. 

The round also attracted individual investors, including Henri Stern, Kaz Nejatian, and Med Benmansour.

Founded by Lorcan O'Cathain and Stefan Kruger, Lua provides a platform that allows businesses to create and manage AI-powered agent workforces regardless of their technical expertise. 

The two founders previously worked together in East Africa while scaling a fintech company, with O’Cathain serving as COO and Kruger as CTO. 

Before launching Lua, O’Cathain led Africa operations at Zephyr Management, while Kruger held a senior engineering role at Paystack prior to its acquisition by Stripe.

The company plans to use the new funding to grow its developer ecosystem and expand the Lua Implementation Network, a global community of partners deploying AI agent systems across different markets. 

Since rolling out its agent development platform in October 2025, Lua has recorded rapid growth, with revenue increasing by nearly 30 percent week-on-week.   

The firm also reported a surge in adoption in early 2026, with February alone seeing more agents created than in all previous months combined. 

In Kenya, businesses are already adopting the platform to deploy customized AI agents that handle tasks such as customer onboarding, loan processing, insurance claims management, and lead conversion through platforms like WhatsApp and websites.

Lua’s platform is designed as a full-stack system that simplifies the deployment and management of AI agents. 

It integrates infrastructure, data handling, model orchestration, and monitoring, allowing teams to focus on defining business logic and workflows. 

Both technical and non-technical users can collaborate on the same system, using either developer tools or a visual interface.

"The companies that will win over the next few years are the ones that build their agent workforce with the same intentionality they bring to their human workforce.

"Most businesses are either blocked by technical complexity or locked into rigid tools that don't reflect how their teams actually work. Most agent platforms compound this with black box tooling and per-outcome pricing: the more your agents succeed, the more you pay, with no pathway to improving your agent economics. Lua is built on the opposite principle: teams own their agents, own their outcomes, and build compounding efficiency over time," said CEO Lorcan O'Cathain.

Investors backing the startup say the company is well-positioned to shape how businesses integrate AI into everyday operations.

"We are thrilled to support Lua. The founders fundamentally understand how agent and human workforces need to collaborate to get work done. 

"Additionally, they are a global company that has deployed in Africa, Asia, the U.S., and Europe with deep experience, a volume of data, and a pricing intuition that's difficult to replicate. We're excited to help them build out this operating system for human and agent workforces," said Lexi Novitske.