We’re excited to share that Swoop has raised $7.3M, with participation from Version One alongside our friends at Long Journey, Variant, Soma Capital and Dune.

This also marks Version One’s first investment in Africa – a market has the potential to produce the next generation of global platform companies.

Swoop is building a super-app for Africa—a single platform for payments, food delivery, and everyday commerce. The company launched in Eswatini, where it quickly became the country’s largest ecommerce platform with 22,000+ users, and is now expanding into Lagos, Nigeria—one of the world’s fastest-growing urban markets.

Africa already processes $18T in digital payments annually, growing at >10% per year. But the market remains fragmented, and distribution is still unsolved. We believe this creates an opening for a new platform layer.

Why we invested

Swoop’s founder and CEO, Aubrey Niederhoffer, has been building toward this for years. As a teenager, he ran a global GeoGuessr community spanning 150+ countries, then built a recruitment company connecting African talent with U.S. employers—giving him early exposure to the continent’s depth of talent and ambition. At 19, he dropped out of UC Berkeley, moved to Eswatini, and launched Swoop. Within months, it became the country’s leading ecommerce platform.

What stands out is his intentionality. Aubrey chose Africa early, relocated, and is building locally. That level of founder-market alignment—and willingness to go where others won’t—is rare.

The opportunity

Africa’s first wave of fintech—telecom-led mobile money—was built for a fragmented, offline-first economy. That model worked. But the underlying assumptions are changing.

A more urban, connected, and digitally native Africa is emerging. Consumers are moving from single-purpose tools to integrated platforms that bundle payments, commerce, and services into one experience.

We’ve seen this playbook before. In Asia, platforms like WeChat and Grab became the default interface for daily life. We believe a similar shift is underway in Africa—and that the next generation of platforms will be built natively for this new consumer. Swoop is early, but it is building toward that future. The company launched in Lagos in April 2026, with payments and point-of-sale products to follow.

Congratulations to Aubrey and the Swoop team—we’re excited to partner as they build one of the defining platforms for the continent.