Aubrey Niederhoffer is the 19-year-old Founder and CEO of Swoop, a food delivery startup building Africa's next super app with a 28-person team and $7.3 million in seed funding from top Silicon Valley investors.

Niederhoffer grew interested in Africa while playing GeoGuessr as a tween, and at age 15 started a recruiting company focused on Eswatini's labor pool. He co-founded Swoop in Eswatini in August 2025 after his freshman year at UC Berkeley, acquiring 6,000 users in the first month.

Niederhoffer was named a Thiel Fellow, joining alumni like Figma CEO Dylan Field and Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin. He relocated to Lagos in fall 2025 and rebuilt Swoop's codebase from scratch using AI tools.

Swoop raised $7.3 million in seed funding from Long Journey, Variant, Version One, Dune Ventures, Soma Capital, and Zero Knowledge Ventures. Niederhoffer takes inspiration from Asian super apps like WeChat and Kaspi to build the default layer for marketplace services and payments in Africa.

Swoop launched food delivery operations in Yaba, Lagos, entering a market that saw exits from Jumia Food and Bolt Food. The $7.3 million raise is one of the largest seed rounds disclosed by an African consumer startup in recent years.