Lua raises USD $5.8 million seed round led by Norrsken22

Lua has raised USD $5.8 million in a seed round led by Norrsken22. Other investors include Flourish Ventures, 20VC, P1 Ventures, Phosphor Capital and Y Combinator.

The London-based company develops software that lets businesses build and manage AI agents that work alongside staff. Its platform is designed for both technical and non-technical teams, with access through command-line tools and a natural-language interface.

Lua was founded by Lorcan O'Cathain and Stefan Kruger, who previously worked together while scaling a fintech business in East Africa. O'Cathain served as Chief Operating Officer, and Kruger as Chief Technology Officer.

Before founding Lua, O'Cathain was managing director of Zephyr Management's Africa business, which invests across Africa, India and Sri Lanka. Kruger was vice president of engineering at Paystack, having joined the payments company before its acquisition by Stripe.

Growth plans

Lua plans to use the funding to expand its developer community and its Lua Implementation Network, a group of independent partners that deploy its agent systems in local markets. The network spans Africa, Asia, the US and Europe.

It also shared recent growth figures. Since launching its agent developer platform in October 2025, revenue has grown by nearly 30 per cent week on week. In February 2026, more agents were built on the platform than in the entire cumulative period since launch.

The software is positioned as a full-stack platform for creating what Lua calls an agent workforce. It handles infrastructure, model orchestration, data, channel integrations and monitoring, leaving customers to define business logic and choose the integrations their agents need.

The aim is to enable teams to deploy working agent systems within hours and to run handoffs between software agents and human workers within existing business systems. Technical users can work with developer tools, while non-technical teams use a visual interface on the same platform.

O'Cathain set out the company's view of the market in a statement on the fundraise.

"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 Lorcan O'Cathain, Chief Executive Officer of Lua.

Investor backing

The round also included angel investors Henri Stern, Chief Executive Officer of Privy, Kaz Nejatian, Chief Executive Officer of Opendoor, and Med Benmansour, Chief Executive Officer of Nuitee.

Norrsken22 focuses on technology businesses across Africa and cited the founders' operating background across multiple regions as part of its rationale for the deal. Lua has worked in emerging markets in Africa and Asia, as well as with customers in the US and Europe.

Lexi Novitske of Norrsken22 said the firm sees Lua as addressing a practical problem in how companies organise work between people and AI systems.

"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 US 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, General Partner at Norrsken22.