Thiel Fellow Aubrey Niederhoffer's 28-person company, backed by Silicon Valley investors, targets the under-penetrated Nigerian market valued at $1.1 billion, launching in Yaba before expanding into payments and financial services.
Swoop, a food delivery startup founded by 19-year-old UC Berkeley dropout Aubrey Niederhoffer, has raised $7.3 million in seed funding and launched operations in Lagos this month as it pursues ambitions to build a super app for Africa, starting with food delivery and expanding into payments and financial services, according to a Fortune report.
The round was backed by Silicon Valley investors, including Long Journey, Variant, Version One, Dune Ventures, Soma Capital, and Zero Knowledge Ventures, with participation from Walter Kortschak and Base Capital. Niederhoffer, who was also named to the prestigious Thiel Fellowship this week, told Fortune that the startup’s 28-person team has begun onboarding restaurants and hiring staff in Yaba, a neighbourhood in Lagos Mainland already served by Chowdeck, Glovo, and FoodCourt. The Thiel Fellowship, founded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel in 2011, offers young people $250,000 to skip or drop out of college and build new things, with notable recipients including Figma CEO Dylan Field and Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin.
Swoop, formerly known as Thumo, launched in Eswatini in August 2025 and acquired 6,000 users in its first month, representing over 1% of the country’s internet users. Co-founder Edwin Ruiz told local press in Eswatini that the goal was to build a pan-African super app combining food, groceries, and rides. Niederhoffer’s path to Lagos began with an online geography game called Geoguessr, which sparked his interest in Africa as a tween. By age 15, he had launched a recruiting company focused on the labor market in Eswatini, which he visited during school breaks. After debuting the food delivery app in Eswatini the summer after his freshman year at Berkeley, he decided to drop out and pursue the business full-time, relocating to Lagos in fall 2025 and rebuilding the entire codebase from scratch using AI tools.
Demola Adesina, Swoop’s Nigerian country manager, told TechCabal that the company believes Nigeria’s food delivery market, valued at $1.1 billion in 2025, has more room to grow than competitors suggest, with the ratio of food ordered for delivery to food consumed outside the home far lower in Nigeria than in peer markets in Africa or Southeast Asia. The startup uses a network of independent riders rather than an employed fleet, generating revenue through commissions on restaurant sales and customer handling fees. While riders retain 100% of delivery fees, the startup applies a 7% service charge to fund operations. Adesina said the target is not existing consumption but users who are not consuming, adding that Swoop is not getting into a war with other platforms but trying to grow the pie.
The $7.3 million seed raise is one of the largest disclosed by an African consumer startup, nearly as large as the $9 million Series A that Chowdeck closed in August 2025 after four years of operations and expansion into 11 cities. Niederhoffer draws direct inspiration from Asian markets, where platforms like Kaspi and WeChat have become the default layer for marketplace services, payments, and everyday life. He told Fortune that in Africa, there is no legacy banking infrastructure, meaning startups are competing with other fintechs rather than credit cards, which are not popular, creating a huge opportunity.
Food delivery in Nigeria is a tightly contested sector that has claimed many startups and local divisions of well-funded international companies like HelloFood, Jumia Food, Bolt Food, and OFood, as the unit economics rarely work at scale. According to Jumia’s 2022 financial report, its food delivery arm lost $1.80 for every $10 it made, with logistics and marketing costs exceeding revenue, which meant Jumia was essentially paying customers and restaurants to use the service. These unit economics are a primary reason why Jumia eventually shuttered its food delivery business in late 2023. Niederhoffer acknowledged to Fortune that Swoop has only operated in fair weather so far, leaving open how the service would perform in a rainstorm, a reflection of the extreme logistics challenges Lagos presents, including traffic, infrastructure gaps, and unpredictable weather.
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