Press release:

Salla, the leading Saudi platform for e-commerce solutions, announced its acquisition of Paylink, a company specialising in payment solutions, in a strategic step aimed at enhancing Salla's capabilities in the fintech sector and expanding the scope of financial solutions that enable merchants to manage and grow their businesses.

Paylink is a Saudi fintech company that carries the "Saudi Tech" label and is licensed by the Saudi Central Bank to provide e-commerce payment services. Over the past years, it has developed a specialised technical infrastructure in electronic payment solutions serving companies and merchants in the Kingdom.

This acquisition is part of Salla's strategy to build an integrated ecosystem that supports merchants at various stages of their business growth and to expand the platform's role beyond enabling sales and operations, reaching more advanced and smarter financial services built around the needs of merchants and their businesses.

By combining the capabilities of Salla and Paylink, Salla seeks to develop a more integrated experience for receiving and managing payments, whether in e-commerce or physical sales channels, paving the way for providing smart payment solutions at points of sale, including SoftPOS technologies that expand the merchant's ability to receive payments easily and flexibly wherever the sale occurs.

Paylink's capabilities also support Salla's direction towards enabling merchants to reach customers outside the local market and receive payments from around the world, as its infrastructure supports international sales cases, multiple currencies, and various payment methods, opening up greater opportunities for Saudi brands to grow and expand regionally and globally.

The step combines Salla's deep experience in the commerce sector and the needs of tens of thousands of merchants with the technical and regulatory expertise developed by Paylink in the payments sector, establishing a new phase of integration between commerce and financial services and giving the merchant a system more capable of keeping pace with their business growth and expansion into new channels and markets.

Nawaf Hariri, Founder and CEO of Salla, said:

"Since Salla's inception, our goal has been to enable merchants to build and grow their businesses through an integrated ecosystem that reduces complexity and provides them with the tools they need to grow. We believe that financial services are a natural extension of this vision; our acquisition of Paylink adds important capabilities and expertise to Salla that will help us build smarter and more integrated payment solutions and enable our merchants to receive payments wherever their customers are, whether online or at points of sale, inside and outside the Kingdom."

The acquisition reflects Salla's continued investment in the infrastructure for the future of commerce and the development of an ecosystem that links commerce, payments, and financial services in a more integrated manner, supporting the growth of Saudi brands within the Kingdom and helping them expand regionally and reach new markets and customers.

Press release:

Saudi online automotive marketplace Syarah has raised $12 million in a new investment from Impact46 to expand its presence across Saudi Arabia’s new and used car market. The company did not disclose the stage of the funding round.

Syarah operates a digital car-buying platform that enables consumers to browse new and used vehicles, complete much of the purchasing process remotely and have their selected vehicle delivered directly to them, reducing the need to visit a traditional dealership.

The company already serves customers across all regions of Saudi Arabia and has handled thousands of purchases, according to Arab Founders. Its model combines an online automotive marketplace with nationwide vehicle delivery, giving customers outside major cities access to a wider selection of vehicles.

The fresh capital will support Syarah’s efforts to reach more customers across the Kingdom and further develop its digital platform and delivery operations as it scales nationwide. The company has not provided a detailed breakdown of how the investment will be allocated.

Press release:

Jeddah-based live shopping startup Rwaj has raised $1.2 million (SAR 4.5 million) in a pre-Seed funding round as it looks to scale its live social shopping and auction marketplace across the region. The investors participating in the round were not disclosed.

Founded in 2024 by Taher Alblowe, Rwaj provides a social commerce platform that allows sellers to livestream products and offer them either at fixed prices or through timed auctions where buyers can bid in real time.

The startup brings several elements of the live commerce process into a single platform, including livestreaming, bidding, payments and shipping. Payments are held in escrow until buyers confirm delivery, while shipping is handled through integrated carriers. Buyers can pay using Mada, Apple Pay or cards.

Rather than focusing on a single product category, Rwaj is designed for products that benefit from live demonstrations. The platform also incorporates social features that allow buyers to follow sellers, discover new merchants and return to future livestreams.

The company will use the new funding to accelerate product development and expand its presence across the region.

Press release:

Saudi Arabia-based real estate platform AQAR has signed a memorandum of understanding with Syrian classifieds company Doushesh, paving the way for a strategic investment of up to $480,000.

Under the proposed transaction, AQAR will invest through a Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE), with the funding to be provided in tranches linked to Doushesh achieving agreed growth milestones.

The investment is intended to support the development and expansion of Doushesh’s classified advertising platform, which serves the Syrian market.

The agreement also seeks to support the development of digital infrastructure for the real estate and classified advertising sectors, as Syria’s entrepreneurial ecosystem begins attracting greater regional interest.

The MoU was signed by Ibrahim Al-Shehail, CEO of AQAR, and Alaa Al-Din Zarzour, CEO of Doushesh.

Press release:

Saudi Arabia-based fintech Nayla has closed an approximately $18 million pre-Series A funding round comprising a mix of equity and debt financing, the company announced at LEAP 2026 in Riyadh.

The equity portion of the round was led by Idrisi Ventures, with participation from Suhail Ventures and other strategic investors, while BLOMINVEST led the debt facility.

Nayla was built through Sanabil Studio and said the latest financing makes it the first venture launched by the studio to successfully close an institutional funding round.

The company provides AI-powered lending solutions aimed at expanding access to fast, digital financing for micro-businesses across Saudi Arabia.

Nayla plans to use the new capital to accelerate the development of its AI-powered lending solutions and significantly expand the availability of financing to micro-businesses across the Kingdom.

The company said its expansion is aligned with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 objectives and the role of micro-enterprises in the Kingdom’s economic development.

Nayla thanked its investors and partners for their backing and said it would continue developing its financing products to support the growth of its customers and their businesses.

Press release:

Sirdab, the company building the logistics infrastructure layer for Saudi Arabia and the GCC, has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by new investor Elm, the PIF-backed digital solutions company, and existing investor BECO Capital. Other backers include Y Combinator, COTU Ventures and D Global Ventures.

Founded in 2022, Sirdab enables companies to access, manage and scale their logistics through a single platform. Businesses secure verified warehousing and transportation, manage inventory and orders across locations, and monitor service levels in one place, while providers use Sirdab's software to standardise operations, share capacity and manage billing and compliance.

Sirdab has grown revenue 20x since graduating from Y Combinator's Winter 2023 batch while reaching profitability. Its clients include major government entities, publicly listed companies, and leading enterprises across multiple sectors, among more than 850 businesses using the platform. Its network spans 120+ warehouses and 60+ transportation providers, supporting dry, ambient, chilled, and frozen logistics.

Sirdab operates an asset-light network, complemented by strategically located company-operated facilities in key hubs. Its proprietary software enables this distributed infrastructure to function as one connected system, giving businesses flexibility, visibility and control as they scale, and giving providers new demand and standardised operations.

"Saudi Arabia is building one of the most dynamic logistics markets in the world, and businesses here have enormous room to grow," said Naif Alzahri, co-founder and CEO of Sirdab. "Sirdab gives them the infrastructure to grow on. We make quality capacity accessible in days, keep operations visible in real time and hold service to a consistent standard, so companies can expand into new cities and categories with confidence. This funding allows us to bring that to many more businesses across the Kingdom and the GCC."

The funding will support Sirdab's expansion across Saudi Arabia and the GCC, the growth of its network and further development of its platform, including AI that matches businesses to the right capacity and automates day-to-day coordination between shippers, warehouses and carriers.

Press release:

Saudi Arabia-based corporate travel technology platform FlyAkeed has secured SAR 94.3 million ($25.15 million) in growth funding, combining an equity investment with Murabaha sukuk financing. The financing was announced at LEAP 2026 in Riyadh.

The equity portion was led by Sanabil Investments, an investment company wholly owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), with participation from Artal Capital, stc Group’s corporate venture capital fund tali ventures, and Aljazira Capital. Artal Capital also led the Murabaha sukuk financing, providing FlyAkeed with a Shariah-compliant financing structure alongside the equity investment.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Riyadh, FlyAkeed operates a corporate travel management platform designed to centralise business travel processes. Employees can book flights, hotels and ground transportation within company policies, while businesses can automate approvals and manage travel policies, workflows and expenditure through a single dashboard.

The company currently serves more than 150 corporate clients across Saudi Arabia, including PIF, Maaden, Golf Saudi and the National Housing Company.

FlyAkeed plans to use the funding primarily to support a new embedded deferred-payment offering for large enterprises. The product is designed to allow corporate customers to settle travel invoices under more flexible payment terms.

The company is targeting Saudi Arabia’s expanding corporate travel market, where business travel expenditure exceeded $10 billion in 2024 and is projected to roughly double by 2033, according to figures cited by FlyAkeed.

“Corporate travel in our region still runs on phone calls, WhatsApp groups and spreadsheets. We are replacing that with an operating system: every trip inside policy, every riyal visible in real time, every approval in seconds,” said Bassam Almohammadi, founder and CEO of FlyAkeed.

“Large enterprises don’t just want better software; they want better payment terms. Now we give them both,” he added.

OmniOps, Saudi Arabia's sovereign AI infrastructure technology company, today announced at LEAP the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with HPE to develop sovereign AI solutions that bring together HPE’s ‘Saudi Made’ infrastructure and OmniOps’ Saudi-developed AI platforms and in-country deployment capabilities. Aligned with HPE’s Saudi Made, Developed & Deployed (SMDD) initiative, the collaboration aims to help government and enterprise organisations accelerate AI adoption while strengthening digital sovereignty and local technology capabilities.

Combined with OmniOps' deployment infrastructure and enterprise AI management capabilities, this collaboration creates an end-to-end stack in which the servers, infrastructure and AI management layers are built in Saudi Arabia and operating within its jurisdiction.

While data residency and local model deployment have become central to sovereign AI strategies, organizations are increasingly looking further down the technology stack at the infrastructure their workloads run on. By integrating locally produced compute with locally operated AI infrastructure and software, OmniOps is extending that control from hardware through deployment and enterprise AI management.

Through the collaboration, HPE and OmniOps plan to combine locally produced infrastructure with Saudi-developed AI platforms and in-country deployment expertise to help organizations move from AI experimentation to production. Reflecting the vision of the SMDD initiative, the companies aim to develop sovereign AI solutions that can be validated, deployed and supported within the Kingdom, while creating new opportunities to commercialize Saudi technology innovation. 

"Achieving sovereignty across an entity’s tech stack means careful consideration at every level,” Mohammed Altassan, Founding CEO of OmniOps, commented: “Today, our customers across government, aviation and financial services require more control and transparency. Running our own software on servers produced here in the Kingdom means we can answer all three of their immediate needs: where their data sits, who built the platform running on top of it and where the hardware underneath it comes from. That is what a genuinely sovereign stack looks like, and it is what the National Strategy for Data and AI was built to enable."

Mohammad Alrehaili, VP & Managing Director for the Middle East at HPE, said: “This collaboration with OmniOps brings the vision of Saudi Made, Developed & Deployed to life and will give organizations in Saudi Arabia a strong foundation for deploying sovereign AI at scale. Together we will help accelerate AI adoption and support the continued growth of the Kingdom’s technology ecosystem.”

OmniOps' offering is anchored by Bunyan, its AI inference platform, which enables organizations to deploy and manage AI workloads across cloud, on-premises and air-gapped environments according to their security, regulatory and operational requirements. Bunyan gives organizations access to leading LLMs hosted in the Kingdom, alongside the infrastructure and building blocks needed to securely adopt and deploy GenAI across their organizations. Its hardware-agnostic architecture also allows OmniOps to integrate locally produced compute while preserving customer choice across different AI infrastructure providers.

Press release:

COFE Tech (formerly COFE APP), the leading operator of agentic AI enterprises and the provider of intelligent procurement and commerce infrastructure to more than 1,000 businesses across the Gulf, announced today at LEAP 2026 the close of a pre-IPO funding round valuing the company at $178 million. The round was co-led by Wa'ed Ventures, the domestic venturing arm of Aramco, Aditum Investment Management, the regional fund partner to global financial giants like BlackRock, Masarrah Investment Company and Alyasra Foods. The investment puts COFE Tech, dubbed as the “Salesforce of MENA”, on course for a targeted IPO on the Saudi Exchange by 2029, aligned with the ambitions of Saudi Vision 2030.

“Too many companies in our region still run procurement, sales and inventory on systems that do not talk to one another, and that gap costs them efficiency at every step,” said Ali Al-Ebrahim, founder and CEO of COFE Tech. “COFE Tech brings those operations into a single intelligent platform, where agents watch the business, anticipate what it needs and act on its behalf, before a shelf runs empty or a customer is kept waiting. The backing from Wa'ed Ventures, Aditum Investment Management, Masarrah Investment Company and Alyasra Foods reflects confidence in our read on where enterprise software in the Gulf is heading, and we intend to turn that into continued growth across the MENA region.”

Al-Ebrahim added: “Since COFE launched out of Kuwait in 2018, we have expanded quickly across the Gulf, including the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The business and innovation environments in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are what made that pace possible. COFE Tech today is a working example of what the innovation-enabling economic visions of the Gulf countries can produce when they line up, and of the AI-ecosystem this region gives ambitious Gulf companies to grow and scale regionally. We thank all our investors for their continued trust and confidence in our vision, and for their support for our team.”

“COFE Tech is built as one core with two engines, a foundation flexible enough for an enterprise to start with a single workflow and extend across its whole operation without re-platforming,” said Shahood Siddiqui, Chief Technology Officer of COFE Tech. “That architecture is proving itself in production: enterprises across the Gulf have transformed how they run growth, procurement and finance on it, with our agents working inside their day-to-day decisions. This round lets us take that foundation further.”

Anas Algahtani, Chief Executive Officer at Wa’ed Ventures, said: “COFE Tech has demonstrated an impressive ability to evolve from a consumer marketplace into an enterprise technology platform addressing critical procurement and commerce challenges. Its growing adoption across Gulf enterprises validates both the strength of its technology and the scale of the opportunity ahead. We see significant potential for COFE Tech to deepen its presence in Saudi Arabia and build an institutionally ready technology company with long-term regional relevance.”

“Aditum Venture Capital Fund’s participation in this round reflects its approach to identifying compelling investment opportunities globally and across regional markets in MENA, supported by Aditum Group’s presence in UAE and Saudi Arabia,” stated Manoj Mahadev, Head of Investments, Aditum Investment Management.

“COFE Tech represents the type of opportunity Aditum VC looks for, combining disciplined expansion across key regional markets with a growing enterprise business and an evolving governance framework that positions the business for its next stage of growth. This combination of regional growth potential and institutional capabilities is central to how Aditum evaluates VC investment opportunities,” stated Sonali Goila, Head of VC, Aditum Investment Management.

Dalal Al Mutlaq, Principle and Board member at Masarrah Investment Company, said: “Building enduring businesses requires patient capital and the ability to support companies as they move into more ambitious stages of development. COFE Tech has grown from its roots in Kuwait into a technology business serving more than 1,000 enterprises across the Gulf region, while continuing to broaden the role its platform plays for enterprise customers. Masarrah sees strong potential in the company’s next chapter and the value it can build as it continues to scale.”

Yousef Nasser Alfulaij, Head of Real Estate and Projects at Alyasra Group, said: “Our participation in this round reflects our strong conviction in the company’s growth potential and the opportunity for ambitious technology companies to build a strong foundation in the region and scale from here. Since its founding, COFE has demonstrated a clear ability to evolve and enter new markets, reinforcing our confidence in the management team’s ability to lead the company through its next phase of growth, strengthen COFE’s presence across the GCC, and expand beyond the region.”

The closing of COFE Tech’s funding round was announced during LEAP 2026 in Riyadh, with the company represented by Founder and CEO Ali Al-Ebrahim and Co-Founder Hamad Musaed Al-Sayer, alongside representatives of the participating investors.

The latest round of investment backs the progress COFE Tech has made in growing from a consumer marketplace to an operator of agentic AI enterprises, along two principal tracks. The first is Agentic Procurement, a unified enterprise procurement infrastructure solution. The second is Agentic Commerce, a unified enterprise technology infrastructure solution. Both run alongside the company’s direct-to-consumer marketplace, the business where the platform was first built and proven.

COFE Tech today serves more than 1,000 clients across 3,000 outlets in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, spanning coffee shops and restaurants, hotels, hospitals, education, aviation and corporates. Clients include Emirates, Etihad Airways, Kuwait Airways, Al-Futtaim Group, Kuwait Finance House, the Central Bank of Kuwait, stc, Aramco and Alibaba Cloud, among others.

BitOasis, a CoinDCX company and one of the Middle East and North Africa's pioneer and leading regulated digital asset platforms, today announced the appointment of Jonathan Rigg as Chief Executive Officer.

 Mr. Rigg succeeds Ola Doudin, who co-founded BitOasis in 2016 and has led the company over the past years to become the region's most established crypto platform.

The appointment marks the next stage in BitOasis's development as it deepens its presence across the MENA region. The platform has recorded approximately $8.5 billion in spot trading volume and serves a client base spanning retail investors, family offices and institutions across the UAE, Bahrain and the wider market. 

"Over the years, we've worked to build more than a company; we've helped kickstart and lay the foundations for the digital asset industry across the region, and with that BitOasis has become one of the most trusted crypto brands across the GCC. From navigating an emerging market, achieving important regulatory milestones to serving more than a million customers in the region, every achievement has been the result of exceptional commitment towards our mission from day one. I couldn't be more confident in handing the business over to Jonathan, whose experience and leadership make him the right person to lead BitOasis through its next phase of growth," said Ola Doudin, Co-Founder of BitOasis.

"I am delighted to welcome Jonathan to the BitOasis family. He joins us as Chief Executive Officer at an important moment for the business, and I am confident his experience will help take the platform into its next chapter. I am deeply grateful to Ola for building an exceptional brand and an equally exceptional team, one that has been instrumental in enabling access to crypto across the region," said Sumit Gupta, Co-Founder of CoinDCX. In 2024, CoinDCX, India's leading crypto exchange, acquired BitOasis.

Mr. Rigg is a senior financial services commercial leader with an extensive track record spanning global banking, digital assets and fintech platforms. He has direct P&L ownership experience scaling businesses from pre-revenue to profitability, including the monetisation of crypto infrastructure; OTC trading, stablecoin payments and Banking as a Service. A hands-on operator, he has launched regulated platforms, built high-performing commercial teams, and is well connected across the region's regulators, financial institutions and enterprise clients.

Mr. Rigg brings close to a decade of experience in global banking and markets, with previous roles at HSBC and Deutsche Bank, predominantly in prime brokerage and capital advisory. Most recently he spent three years at Fuze Finance as Vice President, Commercial, where he was part of the founding team and helped scale the business from inception. 

"It's an honour to join BitOasis at such an important point in its journey. Ola and the team have built an exceptional platform with a strong reputation across the region, and my role is to build on that foundation. Together, we will continue strengthening our products, expanding our capabilities, and delivering the high standards our customers, partners and regulators expect. Trust and safety will continue to remain a central lever in everything we do, ensuring customers can engage with confidence as the platform grows. BitOasis has played a defining role in shaping the digital asset ecosystem across the MENA region, and I'm excited to lead the company into its next chapter," said Jonathan Rigg, incoming Chief Executive Officer of BitOasis.

In May 2025, the company launched BitOasis Bahrain following the grant of a broker dealer license from the Central Bank of Bahrain, extending its regulated footprint beyond the UAE. Its OTC desk now serves institutional clients with the liquidity and execution certainty they require, and the company has secured regulatory approval for derivatives products that are moving toward market launch.

"I am thrilled to welcome Jonathan at such a pivotal time for BitOasis. Having built a strong foundation of trust and regulatory compliance across the region, including our operations here in Bahrain, we are in a prime position for our next phase of growth. I look forward to working closely with him to further strengthen our brand, expand our footprint, and cement BitOasis as the leading, most trusted crypto platform across the MENA region," said Ali Dashti, General Manager, BitOasis Bahrain.

These milestones, together with the continued integration with CoinDCX, position BitOasis at the center of the region's digital asset ecosystem.

Press release:

Enhance, the operating system for personal training (PT), announces an $18.2 million equity/debt fund raising.

Institutional investors include Global Ventures – the leading MENA venture capital firm (equity) – and Stride Ventures (venture debt).

The growth capital provided in the round will be used to accelerate Enhance’s expansion in the United States. As the world’s largest gym market, the US is Enhance’s centre of gravity and where its model generates the most value. 

Enhance’s enterprise software has been licensed in the US since January 2025 and is now present in 700+ clubs across major national chains such as Crunch Fitness – one of America’s largest gym chains – In-Shape Family Fitness; UFC Gym; and PureGym USA. A significant operational milestone, Enhance is among the first GCC-built software platforms to be exported and deployed at scale in the US market.

Across its markets, Enhance supports 15,000 personal trainers and over 500,000 booked PT sessions a month. Revenue has compounded at 65% CAGR since 2019.

Tarek Mounir, Founder and CEO of Enhance, said:

“We are delighted to add growth capital and to diversify our capital structure from a position of strength. We are becoming the global operating system for Personal Training, amid the popularity in the United States – the world’s largest gym market – of our GCC-built SaaS platform that redefines how PT services are delivered and managed. With more US expansion ahead and the prospect of other international markets being perfectly suited to our system, we look forward to the future with confidence.”

The market outlook is positive. PT is the most profitable revenue line in fitness but the least systematised. Enhance is the operating system for PT, helping large gym chains in the high-volume, low-price (HVLP) segment turn PT from an afterthought into predictable, profitable revenue streams. 

A typical HVLP gym with 10,000-12,000 members that converts just 3%-4% of its members into PT produces revenue comparable to the location's overall membership revenues. Enhance’s enterprise-level software makes that conversion manageable at scale. At mature HVLP sites using Enhance, PT revenues can reach $85,000 per club per month – a compelling long-term value case for gyms. 

Enhance’s three-to-five-year vision is to be the system of record and operating standard for the $42 billion global PT market – the platform gym operators default to the way hotel groups default to property management software or restaurants default to reservation systems. This category does not exist yet and Enhance is building it. Enhance is pursuing strategic partnerships in the US that reflect this logic – enterprise gym groups seeking operators they can trust to run PT end-to-end, beyond just software.

The GCC market environment is also positive, as a structural shift has occurred in how consumers approach health. Contemporary gym users are sophisticated and now seek guidance on strength, recovery, energy, and long-term health span – a significant vocabulary shift in under a decade. Consumer demand in some GCC markets is outpacing the supply of qualified personal trainers, showing the ceiling is still far above where the market is today.

In the GCC, the Company’s anchor partner is GymNation – for whom Enhance runs the entire PT operation, end-to-end, across all locations in the UAE, KSA and Bahrain. Outside the US, KSA is the Company’s highest growth market and where Enhance is seeing more first-time formal fitness participants than in any other geography it operates in. Enhance also operates in Qatar. 

Enhance benefits from significant barriers to entry. Every PT session Enhance has supported over the last eight years, which is a data point on what makes a personal trainer successful, why members stay at or leave a gym, and where a gym’s revenue leaks out. New market entrants would require almost a decade of operational history to rebuild this, which cannot be shortcut with capital.

Enhance is also an AI-native company managing an optimal overlapping of technology and trainers. AI accelerates the creation and automation of PT programmes, while the trainer remains in charge of the relationship. Technology handles the production layer, and the human handles the part the gym client is actually paying for.

Noor Sweid, Founder and Managing Partner at Global Ventures, commented:

"Global Ventures has backed Enhance across successive rounds, and our belief in the business has only deepened over that period. From the outset, Tarek and the team were building for global markets, and the company's establishment in the US, alongside its GCC operations, reflects the scale of that ambition. Enhance demonstrates that companies founded in this region can compete and win in the world's most developed markets."

Varun Agarwal, Partner at Stride Ventures, said:

"Enhance is proof of what this region can produce – a homegrown, category-defining and already the go-to partner for the likes of GymNation across the GCC markets. That same conviction is now underpinning the expansion into the US, the world's largest gym market, and we are excited to support the next leg of growth for Enhance."

Press release:

3C Coding School, a premier platform specialising in coding, technology, and artificial intelligence education for children and youth, has officially closed its $3 million Seed funding round. The direct equity investment was spearheaded by MRG Economic Group, led by Egyptian business leader Mahmoud Ramadan, with participation from prominent investor Amr Saad alongside a group of strategic angel investors.

This capital injection marks a major milestone in 3C Coding School's trajectory. It comes on the heels of impressive operational momentum, with the company expanding its user base to over 120,000 students and delivering a 230% surge in revenue. These metrics underscore the booming regional demand for specialised tech education, highlighting the strength of the market opportunity and the scalability of 3C’s underlying model.

Redefining Tech Education: Moving Beyond Traditional Coding

Co-founded in 2015 by engineers Hossam Hosny and Ahmed Khallaf, 3C Coding School was built to disrupt traditional computer science education for young learners. Moving beyond standard code writing and syntax, the platform focuses on fostering higher-order skills, equipping students with structured logical reasoning, creative problem-solving, and critical thinking.

Over the years, 3C has engineered a comprehensive learning ecosystem featuring diverse educational tracks across cutting-edge fields, including web and mobile app development, data science, AI, machine learning, game development, and cybersecurity.

The school's pedagogical framework centres on hands-on, project-based, and interactive learning. Curricula are carefully tailored to suit distinct age groups and skill levels, ensuring students not only acquire practical coding capabilities but also cultivate a mindset grounded in innovation and continuous inquiry.

To date, 3C has reached more than 120,000 young learners while maintaining a strong financial growth trajectory of 230% in revenue, proving both the efficacy of its curriculum and the growing appetite for specialised digital literacy among youth.

Strategic Roadmap: Saudi Market Expansion & Infrastructure Enhancement

3C Coding School plans to deploy the fresh capital into two core strategic pillars designed to catalyse its next growth phase: expanding into Saudi Arabia and accelerating the deployment of an AI-powered learning platform.

Establishing a Footprint in Saudi Arabia

Regional expansion into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia stands at the forefront of 3C's immediate goals. The company aims to establish a formidable market presence, capitalising on the Kingdom’s rapidly accelerating digital economy, burgeoning EdTech sector, and skyrocketing demand for future-ready tech skills.

3C is actively refining its market entry strategy to deliver tailored educational tracks aligned with local requirements. The company plans to leverage strategic local partnerships to rapidly scale its student body and customer base across the Kingdom.

This move forms part of a broader vision to transition 3C from an Egypt-focused market leader into a multinational EdTech powerhouse capable of replicating its model across multiple high-growth Middle Eastern markets.

Next-Generation Tech: AI-Driven Personalized Learning

To redefine the student experience, 3C is channelling a significant portion of the investment into building a state-of-the-art, AI-powered learning platform.

By leveraging proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms, the new platform will analyse individual learning habits, assess real-time progress, support instructors, and dynamically adjust course content to match each student’s unique pace and capabilities.

Through this technological evolution, 3C aims to move past static e-learning formats, delivering an intelligent, highly personalised, and scalable educational framework capable of seamlessly serving millions of students across diverse geographies.

This investment in core infrastructure ensures that 3C's offerings remain data-driven, adaptive, and fully aligned with the fast-moving future of global educational technology.

Growth Highlights at a Glance

3C Coding School’s recent trajectory reflects a powerful growth story in the Middle Eastern tech ecosystem:

• Over 120,000 students empowered across specialised tech tracks.
• 230% increase in revenue growth.
• Continuous refinement of a scalable, resilient business model since 2015.
• Broad dynamic tracks covering AI, machine learning, software development, and cybersecurity.
• Hands-on, practical, project-centric learning model.
• Strategic shift from local market leadership toward aggressive regional scaling.

Looking ahead, 3C aims to leverage this foundation to solidify its market position, prioritising Saudi Arabia as its primary growth vector while continuing to innovate at the intersection of AI and education.

A Strategic Turning Point

Reflecting on the company’s trajectory, Hossam Hosny, Founder of 3C Coding School, stated: "When we launched 3C in 2015, we were driven by a core belief that technology would become an indispensable part of every child’s future. Coding isn't just for future software engineers; it is a fundamental medium for teaching kids how to think, innovate, and solve complex problems."

He added: “Over the years, through constant learning and development, we have built a vibrant ecosystem encompassing more than 120,000 students. For us, that number represents far more than market traction; it represents over 120,000 lives impacted and empowered to navigate the future. This funding round marks a strategic turning point, not merely because of the financial backing, but because of the deep confidence our investors have placed in our vision to build a transformative EdTech platform for the entire region."

Hosny highlighted that securing institutional backing from MRG Economic Group, led by Mahmoud Ramadan, alongside Amr Saad and leading angel investors, brings far more than capital. It supplies strategic depth, market access, and valuable industry expertise necessary for large-scale expansion.

"We don't view the next phase as simple geographic expansion," Hosny added. "It is an opportunity to reinvent how the next generation interacts with and learns technology. That is why AI development lies at the very heart of our forward-looking strategy. Our ultimate mission is to bring accessible, high-impact tech education to millions of young minds across the region, transforming them from mere consumers of technology into the creators and innovators of tomorrow."

Stepping Into an Ambitious New Chapter

Echoing this enthusiasm, Ahmed Khallaf, Co-Founder of 3C Coding School, noted: "Securing a $3 million Seed round is a landmark milestone for 3C. However, we see this investment not as a final destination but as the launching pad for an even more ambitious chapter in our journey."

Khallaf underscored that since day one, 3C's mission transcended standard coding instruction, striving instead to reshape how young minds approach challenges and harness technology to shape their world.

He pointed out that reaching 120,000 students and driving 230% revenue growth validates the strong market demand for high-calibre tech education across Egypt and the broader MENA region.

"This strategic investment, led by MRG Economic Group and our esteemed investment partners, gives us the firepower to accelerate our technical infrastructure, elevate our core product offerings, enter the Saudi market, and fast-track the deployment of our AI platform," Khallaf concluded. "The future of education will be personalised, intelligent, and deeply integrated with technology. 3C is committed to leading that transformation, building one of the region's top EdTech platforms, and equipping millions of students with the critical skills required to excel in a rapidly evolving digital world."

Press release:

Jordan-based education technology company Abwaab has acquired Egyptian edtech startup Eduact for an undisclosed amount, as it expands its platform beyond student-focused digital learning to provide technology infrastructure for independent teachers and learning centres.

Founded in Egypt in 2020 by Adham Hamed and Ali Hisham, Eduact provides software-as-a-service tools for independent educators and small learning centres. Its platform allows users to manage video content, grading and payments while connecting workflows across physical and online learning.

The acquisition will bring Eduact’s technology and relationships with Egyptian educators into Abwaab’s broader platform. Abwaab plans to use its technology, content and regional distribution network to extend Eduact’s offering to more teachers and learning centres across Egypt and other markets.

Founded in Jordan in 2019 by Hamdi Tabbaa, Sabri Hakim and Hussein AlSarabi, Abwaab provides curriculum-aligned online learning, assessments and other education services. The company currently operates across six markets in the MENA region.

“We’ve always believed that transforming education in the Arab world isn’t about one company doing everything; it’s about finding the best teams solving real problems on the ground and building with them,” said Hamdi Tabbaa, co-founder and CEO of Abwaab. He added that Eduact had spent years building relationships with teachers and learning centres across Egypt.

The transaction is Abwaab’s second acquisition this year. Earlier in 2026, it acquired Egypt-based Apex Education, which specialises in international university admissions, extending Abwaab’s offering into higher education preparation and admissions advisory.

Press release:

Ibtikar Fund has announced a seed investment in Churn Solution, an AI-powered customer retention platform that helps subscription-based businesses reduce churn and recover lost revenue through personalised cancellation, reactivation, and payment-recovery flows.

Founded by Abdulhafeth Salah, Mahdi Washha, and Walaa Kashou, Churn Solution moved quickly from concept to execution, launching its first product within three months and securing its first paying customer shortly thereafter. Since then, the company has grown to active paying customers across the USA, UK, Italy, India, Morocco, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Australia.

The platform gives subscription businesses real-time visibility into why customers cancel and the tools to act on it. Personalised cancellation flows present targeted retention offers at the moment a customer attempts to cancel, reactivation flows help win back customers who have already churned, and payment-recovery flows reduce involuntary churn caused by failed payments. AI-driven feedback analysis and session recordings give businesses deeper insight into cancellation behaviour, with in-dashboard AI insights that surface sentiment and cancellation-intent trends automatically. An MCP integration also lets teams query their retention data directly from AI assistants. A no-code flow builder lets non-technical teams design and test retention experiences without engineering support.

“We are excited to back the Churn Solution team as they tackle one of the most pressing challenges for subscription businesses today,” said Ambar Amleh, Managing Partner at Ibtikar Fund. “Retention has become a financial imperative for the subscription economy, and Churn Solution's combination of AI-driven insight and no-code flexibility gives businesses of all sizes the tools to act on it.”

“This investment allows us to accelerate our product roadmap and expand our reach across new markets,” said Abdulhafeth Salah, Co-Founder and CEO of Churn Solution. “We built Churn Solution to give subscription businesses the same level of retention sophistication that was previously only available to large enterprises, and this partnership with Ibtikar helps us bring that to many more customers.”

The investment will support Churn Solution's go-to-market expansion, including new hires across sales, marketing, and content. The company also plans to grow its footprint in the MENA region, with ongoing discussions around integrations with e-commerce platforms.

With the global subscription economy projected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2033, according to Grand View Research, Churn Solution is positioning itself as a flexible, intelligent alternative to rigid, one-size-fits-all retention tools, purpose-built for the startups and SMBs that make up the fastest-growing segment of the market.

Press release:

Saudi Arabia-based climatetech startup Remedium has raised $1.5 million in a pre-Seed funding round led by Kaltaire Investments.

Founded in 2021 by Fawaz Abu-Ghazaleh, Remedium develops technology focused on carbon management and sustainability accounting. Its platform enables businesses to measure, manage and reduce their carbon footprint through digitalisation, automation and data-driven sustainability tools.

The company plans to use the fresh capital to further develop its artificial intelligence and machine-learning capabilities, including physical-risk modelling, forecasting and automated document generation. It also plans to enhance its Climate Intelligence offering to provide organisations with additional analytics and contextual insights around environmental data.

Remedium will expand its sustainability accounting offering with new modules covering water, waste and energy. The modules will incorporate dedicated key performance indicators and document templates, enabling companies to capture and analyse a broader range of operational and environmental data.

The startup also plans to expand its computing infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, with the aim of ensuring that client data remains secure and stored within the Kingdom as part of its focus on data sovereignty.

“The need for sustainability accounting is more relevant than ever,” said Fawaz Abu-Ghazaleh, CEO of Remedium, pointing to the increasing prominence of sustainability in corporate decision-making, public-private partnerships and consumer behaviour.

Remedium has previously participated in Saudi Arabia’s NextEra deeptech programme, a collaboration between King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and the National Technology Development Program (NTDP). KAUST describes Remedium as one of the programme’s sustainability and climatetech startups, focused on AI-powered carbon accounting.

Press release:

Arada, one of the world's fastest-growing master developers, has announced its entry into the Syrian Arab Republic through a joint venture with the state-owned Syrian Sovereign Fund. The joint venture’s first project will be the development of a major new fully integrated city on a four million square metre site west of Damascus.

Arada and the Syrian Sovereign Fund will act as partners on the project, with the master plan to be developed in close partnership with the relevant Syrian government authorities and fully aligned with the country's national reconstruction priorities and development goals. Both entities are currently working together to identify further sites for development across Syria. 

The agreement was signed at the headquarters of the Syrian Sovereign Fund in Damascus, by Arada Group CEO Ahmed Alkhoshaibi and Mohammed Al Khayyat, Board Member and Chief Executive Officer of the Real Estate Development Sector at the Syrian Sovereign Fund, in a ceremony that represented one of the most significant foreign real estate projects in Syria since the beginning of the new chapter of national reconstruction and development.

His Excellency President Ahmed al-Sharaa also received at the People's Palace Arada Group CEO Ahmed Alkhoshaibi. 

The entry into Syria, which makes Arada one of the first UAE developers to expand into the country, is the latest step in the company’s rapid global expansion. The company now has a project pipeline valued at $42 billion across four markets, with a portfolio of more than 66,000 homes spanning the UAE, the United Kingdom, Australia and — with this announcement — Syria.

With an estimated Gross Development Value (GDV) of $7 billion (AED25.7 billion), the development will be in an area known as New Damascus, near the Mezzeh district, on a plateau approximately 10 minutes from Damascus city centre and 25 minutes from Damascus International Airport. 

The site encompasses four million square metres, including a dedicated public park of 700,000 square metres, and will deliver a fully integrated mixed-use community comprising 11,000 homes, including residential apartments, villas and townhouses, branded residences, 500 hotel rooms, 1,000 serviced apartments, education facilities for 5,000 students, a 300-bed hospital, office space, commercial space, retail, extensive parks and recreational areas, government service buildings and other facilities serving the day-to-day needs of the community. It is a development model that draws on the combined strengths of Arada's Aljada and Masaar communities in the UAE.

HRH Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed bin Talal, Executive Vice Chairman of Arada, said: “Syria is at a pivotal moment in its history, and the scale of the opportunity to rebuild and invest in its future is significant. Arada has spent nearly a decade delivering high-quality communities at scale, across multiple markets and in complex environments. Working with the Syrian Sovereign Fund, our organisation is uniquely well-placed to bring that experience to bear here, creating jobs, developing local skills, supporting Syrian businesses and contributing to the local economy. Arada’s success has been shaped by our willingness to make long-term investments where others might hesitate with partners who share our vision to create genuine communities.”

Mohammed Al Khayyat, Board Member and Chief Executive Officer of the Real Estate Development Sector at the Syrian Sovereign Fund, said: “Syria welcomes businesses and companies from around the world, and this strategic partnership with Arada is a powerful demonstration of what that means in practice. The Syrian Sovereign Fund's mandate is to attract world-class investment that creates lasting value for the Syrian people, and we believe that this project represents exactly that. We’re grateful to Arada for their partnership and we look forward to working together to deliver projects that reflect the ambition and resilience of the Syrian people.”

Press release:

HUMAIN, a PIF company delivering full-stack artificial intelligence capabilities globally, today announced a strategic investment in and partnership with Arabic.AI and Tarjama, bringing together HUMAIN’s AI infrastructure, advanced models and capabilities with Tarjama’s deep language expertise and Arabic.AI’s translation, document intelligence and enterprise language technologies. The partnership will leverage more than 18 years of language technology and enterprise delivery expertise to accelerate the adoption of AI-powered translation, document intelligence and language solutions across Saudi Arabia and international markets, enabling organisations to deploy Arabic and multilingual AI capabilities at enterprise scale. 

The investment is designed to accelerate the deployment of Arabic.AI's solutions to Saudi enterprise customers at scale. 

Complementary Strengths 

Each company contributes complementary strengths from across the AI and enterprise technology stack. Together, the collaboration is intended to simplify adoption and reduce the time from concept to deployment for Arabic AI solutions. 

HUMAIN brings its full AI stack: locally operated AI infrastructure, next-generation compute and advanced models. 

Arabic.AI brings its Arabic-first translation management system, Cleverso, its Arabic translation models, and a proven delivery model that embeds language technology directly into enterprise operations. 

Initial Areas of Collaboration 

HUMAIN and Arabic.AI intend to work with early enterprise customers to bring Arabic.AI's solutions to the Saudi market across three priority areas: 

Translation Management System: one Arabic-first platform for every team, enforced glossaries, compounding translation memory, and full control over where linguistic assets sit. 

Archive Digitization Engine: legacy documents, records and media turned into searchable Arabic knowledge, accurate capture of handwritten and degraded script, automatic classification, rights-managed access. 

Document Intelligence Agents: agents that read, check and draft contracts, tenders and filings, clause-level extraction, automated compliance checks, human-in-the-loop drafting. 

Leadership Statements 

Tareq Amin, Chief Executive Officer, HUMAIN, said: “Arabic remains one of the most complex and important languages for enterprise AI to serve effectively. By combining HUMAIN’s full AI stack with Arabic.AI and Tarjama’s deep expertise in Arabic language technology, we intend to give organizations more capable tools for translation, document intelligence and multilingual AI. This partnership is focused on turning proven technology into reliable, production-ready solutions that enterprises can deploy at scale.” 

Nour Al Hassan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Arabic.AI said, 'Arabic is where enterprise AI is tested hardest, and it is what we have built for. Arabic.AI is bringing its full platform, products and expertise into this partnership to serve Saudi enterprises directly. Together with HUMAIN, we are focused on putting Arabic-first AI into the hands of organisations across the Kingdom and helping them move from ambition to production.” 

What Comes Next 

The companies intend to bring their first solutions to market with early enterprise customers, with initial solutions unveiled at LEAP 2026.

Press release:

Aajil Capital, a Saudi joint stock company under establishment, today announced that it has received a licence from the Capital Market Authority (CMA), licence No. 26358-02, to conduct Managing Investments activity in the securities business, under a resolution of the Authority's Board dated 22 June 2026, and is preparing to commence operations in the Kingdom. The firm will commence the activity once it completes the CMA's commencement-of-business requirements.

Once it has commenced business, Aajil Capital intends to provide investment management services, giving investors access to the Kingdom's industrial SME sector in a manner compliant with Shariah principles. Any investment fund offering would be subject to obtaining the necessary licence from the CMA. The sector is one of the priority sectors of Vision 2030 and the National Industrial Strategy and one that has, until now, been difficult to reach at scale.

The opportunity is substantial. Saudi Arabia's construction pipeline alone exceeds USD 1.7 trillion, and the Kingdom is targeting 36,000 factories by 2035, up from roughly 12,000 today. Yet only around 9 percent of bank credit reaches SMEs, against a Vision 2030 target of 20 percent. That gap leaves the industrial supply chain that every giga-project, factory, and infrastructure programme depends on underserved.

Aajil Capital is the sister firm to Aajil, the AI-driven platform that supplies SMEs in Saudi Arabia's industrial supply chain on deferred payment terms. Aajil purchases the materials industrial SMEs require and pays their suppliers directly. Each SME then settles with Aajil over an agreed term, on Shariah-compliant terms aligned to its cash cycle. Built entirely in-house, the platform underwrites in hours rather than weeks and moves materials within days, and it had supplied SAR 600 million of materials to manufacturers, contractors and traders across the Kingdom as of 31 August 2026.

Each transaction adds to what Aajil understands about the sector: which SMEs settle, on what terms, and against what work. That accumulated record is the origination infrastructure on which Aajil Capital's investment strategy is built.

"Receiving our licence from the CMA marks an important milestone for Aajil Capital and reflects our long-term commitment to Saudi Arabia's industrial economy," said Abdulla Sheikh, Chairman of Aajil Capital. "Once we complete the CMA's requirements and commence activity, we will open to investors the same sector Aajil has served for years."

Faisal Chowdhry, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of Aajil Capital, spent 16 years at Goldman Sachs. As an Executive Director in London, he was globally responsible for due diligence on the firm's consumer and MSME financial services transactions, with a particular focus on financial technology across lending, payments and microfinance, and held compliance risk responsibility for Marcus by Goldman Sachs, the bank's consumer platform in the United Kingdom. He spent the five years before that in the firm's alternative investments business, within its European Special Situations Group, and began his career in New York in its Structured Products and Private Equity Funding groups. He holds an MSc in Finance from London Business School.

"Saudi Arabia's industrial SMEs sit at the centre of the Kingdom's manufacturing and construction growth, yet investors have had no practical way to hold that exposure," Chowdhry said. "Aajil Capital exists to close that gap. Once we complete the CMA's requirements and commence activity, our focus is building Shariah-compliant investment strategies that give institutional investors disciplined access to short-dated, asset-backed exposure to the sector, underpinned by origination infrastructure that is already operating at scale."

Aajil Capital will complete the CMA's commencement-of-business requirements before conducting any regulated activity. Further announcements will be made in due course.

Aajil Capital's board comprises Abdulla Sheikh (Chairman), Ihsan Jawad, and Abdulelah Al Saleh. The firm is led by Faisal Chowdhry as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer.

Press release:

LEAP 2026 opens its doors in Riyadh tomorrow, marking the landmark fifth edition of an event that has grown into one of the world’s largest gatherings of the global technology community. Since launching in 2022, LEAP has grown rapidly in scale and international reach, drawing technology companies, investors, startups, speakers and innovators from around the world.

LEAP 5 will welcome global technology leaders, investors, founders and innovators for four days of major announcements, live demonstrations and conversations across AI, advanced computing, mobility, gaming, sport and emerging technology. The programme will span 16 stages and more than 20 content tracks, alongside new zones and experiences that reflect how LEAP has evolved over its first five editions.

The Main Stage will feature some of the most influential voices shaping the global technology landscape, including H.E. Eng. Abdullah Alswaha, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology; Dr. Lisa Su, Chair and CEO of AMD; Chuck Robbins, Chair and CEO of Cisco; and Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. They will be joined by futurist and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku; Javier Tebas, President of LaLiga; and senior leaders and voices from companies including NVIDIA, Google, Roblox, Uber, Meta, Lenovo, Nokia and Luma AI.

With Saudi Arabia’s Year of AI providing a wider backdrop to the fifth edition, AI will run throughout the programme, speakers and experiences at LEAP 2026, with a particular focus on how the technology is moving beyond discussion and into real-world application.

Beyond the headline discussions, LEAP 2026 will bring technology to life through some of the event’s most eye-catching experiences. At Tech Arena, Unitree robots will take to the floor for live dance demonstrations, alongside AGIBOT’s A2 Ultra humanoid robot and COGNIXION technology that enables users to communicate with and control devices using brain signals.

The Future Mobility Zone will bring robotaxis, autonomous delivery drones and flying taxis to the show floor, while GameX Creative will feature new game reveals, LEAP’s Roblox obstacle course and an ESL FACEIT esports racing simulator experience. SportsHub will put visitors in the driving seat through an interactive F1 experience powered by Saudi Motorsport Company and the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, including a racing simulator and an interactive journey through Jeddah Corniche Circuit. The new LEAP Studios will serve as a live hub for podcasts, interviews and creator-led content from across the event.

Global capital and startup growth will also be firmly in focus, with 1289 investors from 1016 firms representing a combined US$14.5 trillion in assets under management confirmed to attend. Rocket Fuel will see 100 finalists compete for a US$1 million equity-free prize pool following more than 3,000 applications, while Ecosystem Xchange will create further opportunities for founders to access new markets and build partnerships. LEAP Connect will provide a dedicated space for the international technology community to connect beyond the stages, bringing founders, investors and technology leaders together across the four days. 

Beyond the venue, LEAP Nights will extend LEAP 5 across Riyadh from 30 August to 4 September, with 60 events across more than 15 venues bringing networking, business, culture and entertainment into the city. The programme will span executive and investor gatherings, founder and VC experiences, cultural activations and community events, giving the global technology community further opportunities to connect while experiencing Riyadh beyond the show floor.

The programme will also connect LEAP with experiences beyond the event itself through a new strategic motorsport partnership between LEAP Nights and F1 Saudi Arabia Motorsport, giving LEAP attendees access to a 20 per cent early-bird ticket offer for the Formula 1 STC Saudi Arabian Grand Prix 2027 in Jeddah.

Annabelle Mander, Executive Vice-President and Co-Creator of LEAP, said: “Five years ago, together with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and SAFCSP, we set out to create a place in Riyadh where the global technology community could come together and turn ambition into meaningful action. What LEAP has become since then goes far beyond its scale. It is about the people who connect here, the partnerships that begin here and the opportunities that continue long after the doors close. Tomorrow, we open our fifth edition, bringing the world’s technology community together once again and reflecting the extraordinary progress of both LEAP and Saudi Arabia’s technology ecosystem.”

In the digital economy, geography works differently. But it has not stopped mattering.

Twenty years ago, an internet company seeking credibility, capital and global reach often looked first to Silicon Valley. Today, companies can be built from almost anywhere. What still varies significantly is how easy a place makes it to operate once a business begins crossing borders.

Dubai has become one of the places from which founders can run global companies day to day, coordinating teams, banking, legal structures and partnerships from the city while the business itself operates across multiple markets. A decade ago, founders seeking that kind of international reach were more likely to default to San Francisco, London or Singapore.

That does not make Dubai the right base for every company. Operating costs can be high, specialist talent is not always available locally, and businesses focused primarily on a single domestic market may find other locations more efficient.

For companies whose teams, customers and partners are distributed across regions, however, Dubai offers something different: a place from which those relationships can be coordinated.

A base for globally distributed businesses

My own experience reflects this shift.

Having built companies in digital fashion and music from the UAE, I have seen how differently a business can now be structured. Teams, creative talent, audiences, partners and customers do not have to be concentrated in the same country as the company’s headquarters.

My current business operates from Dubai while working across multiple markets. That experience has reinforced a broader point: a company can be headquartered in the UAE while its capabilities, audiences and commercial relationships are distributed around the world.

The broader ecosystem has moved in the same direction. Startup Genome's 2026 Global Startup Ecosystem Report values Dubai's startup ecosystem at $30 billion and ranks it No. 2 in MENA, making it the highest-ranked Gulf ecosystem.

But a growing ecosystem does not mean every company will find all the talent, customers or capital it needs within the city itself. Dubai's strength is increasingly its ability to connect companies to international markets rather than replace those markets.

Dubai as a coordination layer between markets

Founders choose a base for operational reasons. For internationally distributed businesses, Dubai's geography makes working across time zones unusually practical: teams can coordinate with Asia earlier in the day, Europe through the working day and the Americas later on.

Connectivity matters just as much.

Distributed teams and partners still need to meet in person. By the end of the first half of 2026, Dubai International Airport was connected to 217 destinations across 99 countries. For a business built around international relationships, having an accessible meeting point can matter as much as having a physical office.

This is where Dubai's role as a bridge becomes more interesting.

A company can build audiences in Latin America, work with partners in Europe and serve customers in the United States while coordinating the business from one location. Dubai becomes the layer connecting those relationships rather than the final destination for all of them.

That matters as global growth becomes less centred on a small number of Western hubs. Opportunities are emerging across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. A company based in Dubai can operate between those markets rather than having to choose one geographic centre.

The city's cultural position also plays a role. Dubai brings together brands, creators and businesses across music, fashion, sport, entertainment and other parts of digital culture. For companies whose products travel through online communities, that proximity can create opportunities for partnerships, distribution and audience development.

Dubai does not eliminate the need to build teams, relationships and market knowledge elsewhere. That is precisely what makes its role different from a traditional hub. Rather than concentrating every function in one city, it can serve as a place from which distributed operations are coordinated.

The creator economy strengthens this model

The rise of the creator economy reinforces the same shift.

A UAE economic impact report from TikTok, developed with Redseer Strategy Consultants, estimated that activity by TikTok-enabled small and medium-sized businesses contributed AED 1.1 billion to the UAE economy and supported more than 7,000 jobs.

Those figures do not represent the entire creator economy, but they illustrate how digital distribution is increasingly translating into business formation and economic activity.

As creators become entrepreneurs, their needs also change. They require company structures, banking, licensing, tax support and access to professional services, while still depending on audiences and commercial relationships in markets around the world.

The UAE has begun building dedicated infrastructure around that transition. Creators HQ, launched in Dubai in 2025, grew out of the AED 150 million Content Creators Support Fund established under the directives of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The initiative provides creators with support around company setup and registration, relocation and access to funding and investors.

The significance is less about any one initiative than what it represents: creator-led businesses are increasingly being treated as companies that need the same operating infrastructure as other digital ventures.

And, again, Dubai does not replace the markets where creators build their audiences. Its role is to provide an operating base from which those markets can be connected.

What this means for MENA founders

The bigger shift for founders across MENA is the separation of where a company is headquartered from where its capabilities and markets are located.

A founder might build with engineering talent in Egypt, develop commercial relationships in Saudi Arabia, raise capital through the UAE and sell into Europe, Asia or the United States without treating relocation to London or Silicon Valley as a prerequisite for global growth.

That creates a more distributed model of entrepreneurship.

Different ecosystems can contribute different capabilities. Dubai can function as a regional and international coordination hub. Saudi Arabia offers access to the region's largest economy and an expanding capital base. Egypt has a large pool of technical and creative talent. Other markets contribute their own expertise, customer bases and competitive advantages.

The opportunity is not for every city to become the next Silicon Valley. It is for these ecosystems to become more connected and complementary.

For founders, the question increasingly becomes not, “Where should I move my company?” but, “Where should each part of my company live?”

Headquarters, product development, talent, fundraising and market entry do not necessarily need to happen in the same place.

Dubai's potential advantage lies in its position at the centre of those connections.

The model also works in both directions. Dubai can serve as a base from which MENA companies reach international markets and as an entry point for global companies building relationships in the region. Its value lies on both sides of that bridge: regional businesses looking outward and international businesses looking inward.

For MENA, the implications extend beyond individual startups. If companies build globally while keeping their core operations connected to the region, more intellectual property, management expertise, capital and high-value jobs can remain within its ecosystems.

That would move MENA closer to being not only a market for global technology companies, but also a region from which globally competitive digital businesses are built.

The operating advantage

Dubai's strongest proposition is not self-sufficiency. It is coordination.

Its value lies in bringing infrastructure, capital, professional services, talent and global access into relatively close proximity. That does not remove the challenges of building an international company, but it can reduce some of the friction involved in coordinating one across multiple markets.

For MENA founders, that is the more consequential shift. Global ambition no longer has to mean geographic departure. A company can be built in the region, use different ecosystems strategically and operate internationally from the beginning.

The next generation of global companies may be less defined by the location of a single headquarters than by how effectively they connect capabilities across borders.

The cities that succeed in that environment will be those that make those connections easier.

Dubai is increasingly positioning itself as one of them.