Press release:

Oro, an innovative financial AI platform translating complex user intent into multi-step execution, today announced the successful closing of a $3 million strategic funding round. The round was co-led by MH Ventures and Mapleblock Capital, with participation from M2M Capital, Archer Capital, and X21 Digital, alongside follow-on strategic backing from Disrupt.com and ZIGLabs. This latest injection brings Oro’s cumulative funding to $4 million, providing ample runway to execute its long-term technical and global expansion objectives.

The new capital arrives during a pivotal industry shift from static conversational AI toward user-authorised, intent-based execution. Rather than manually navigating fragmented decentralised finance (DeFi) interfaces, Oro allows users to state their financial goals in plain text, converting natural-language prompts into multi-step transaction routes. Every execution remains 100% non-custodial and user-signed, bridging the gap between sophisticated financial infrastructure and mass-market accessibility.

Oro plans to deploy the $3 million across four primary operational pillars. A significant portion will advance core AI and agentic research and development, specifically expanding its proprietary Shield Engine and natural language execution stack. The remaining capital will scale global marketing and user acquisition campaigns, build proactive regulatory and compliance frameworks around policy-guarded autonomous custody, and expand engineering, AI research, and business development teams to accelerate enterprise B2B integrations.

The funding follows remarkable traction for the platform, which has already onboarded over 350,000 unique active users across more than 80 supported languages. Oro’s recent educational campaign backed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) saw over 250,000 verified user completions, while a live initiative with Ondo Finance generated over 50,000 verified completions within its first 24 hours. The platform also boasts live mainnet integrations with leading protocols across the Web3 ecosystem, including Morpho, Kamino, Lido, Aave, Uniswap, and Raydium.

Over the next 6 to 12 months, Oro will leverage this capital to achieve its primary target of reaching 10 million active users. Key milestones toward this goal include rolling out native iOS and Android mobile applications, expanding integration offerings, and establishing Oro as the primary B2B and B2C intent routing layer for third-party protocols. While its core board structure remains stable, the company is also in the process of finalising appointments for new advisory board members, including prominent AI and DeFi veterans.

“Over the past 18 months, the Web3 landscape went through a market filter where projects without genuine utility quietly disappeared, but Oro thrived by proving that combining financial infrastructure with natural-language AI creates a product that mass-market users actually want,” said Varun Choudhary, Co-founder and CEO of Oro. “We are witnessing a monumental shift toward intent-based execution. This funding round proves that real, sustainable product-market fit backed by hundreds of thousands of active users will always attract top-tier institutional capital, giving us the exact runway needed to consolidate our first-mover advantage globally.”

“Oro is tackling one of the most persistent bottlenecks in modern finance: complexity,” added Keira Nesdale, Portfolio Manager at co-lead investor MH Ventures. “Their ability to abstract away backend friction while maintaining rigorous, policy-guarded non-custodial security makes them uniquely positioned to lead the agentic finance transition. We are thrilled to co-lead this round and support their vision for mass consumer adoption.”

“The team at Oro has demonstrated exceptional execution and organic user growth through challenging market cycles,” said Vijay Garg, Managing Partner at co-lead investor Mapleblock Capital. “By establishing a seamless bridge between natural-language user intent and protocol execution, Oro is setting the standard for how everyday users and enterprises will interact with digital assets moving forward.”

Press release:

Dubai-based martial arts and holistic education network GMNSM has raised $2 million in funding from investment firm VEYRA Capital, whose portfolio includes companies such as Dwelly, ZINIT and DVC, as well as a private investor. The investment will support the company's first jiu-jitsu academy in Riyadh and the launch of its first European location in Monaco, supporting the company's ambition to broaden the Dubai-developed model of holistic child development to international markets.

Founded in 2022 by professional athlete-turned-entrepreneur Andrej Kuprejev, GMNSM has grown into a network of 11 academies across the UAE, Qatar and Cyprus, serving more than 700 children and adults through Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, judo, gymnastics and holistic development programmes. The company plans to increase its workforce from 40 to 60 employees by the end of the year to support its international expansion.

"We are seeing a massive cultural and educational shift towards more balanced childhoods  where physical activity, confidence and real-world social interaction complement digital learning. At GMNSM, our goal has always been to create an environment where children develop discipline, resilience and the life skills they need to thrive, alongside athletic ability. That's why we're bringing this model to more families across the GCC and Europe," said Andrej Kuprejev, Founder and CEO of GMNSM.

Unlike traditional martial arts academies, GMNSM positions itself at the intersection of sports, supplementary education and child development. Its signature programme combines one hour of physical training with 30 minutes dedicated to soft skills such as goal setting, emotional resilience, reflection and problem-solving.

GMNSM accepts children from age two through structured development programmes and also offers adult martial arts classes. Many parents join after enrolling their children, and this family-orientated approach has helped create a community where sport becomes a shared experience across generations. "We chose GMNSM because we wanted our child to develop skills that go beyond sport – confidence, discipline and resilience. The biggest difference we have seen is that training has become a source of personal growth, not just physical activity. GMNSM has created a community where children feel supported, challenged and motivated to improve," says H.H.  Sheikh Mohammed bin Maktoum Al Maktoum, a relative of a GMNSM students.

Using AI to maintain quality at scale

To ensure consistent coaching standards across every academy, GMNSM has invested in and developed its own lesson audit platform, Allim AI, which analyses coaching performance, student engagement, and retention metrics aimed at standardising teaching quality and providing coaches with actionable feedback. The platform is designed to support rapid scaling without compromising the consistency of the student experience across multiple markets.

Scaling a Dubai-born education model

The company sees Saudi Arabia as its next major growth market, with its first Riyadh academy expected to serve as a foundation for broader expansion across the Kingdom. In 2025, Saudi Arabia reported that 59.1% of adults met the recommended threshold of 150 minutes of weekly physical activity, exceeding the 2025 target of 55%, while physical activity among children aged 5-17 reached 19%, achieving the target originally set for 2030.

In parallel, Monaco will become GMNSM's next European location, chosen for its concentration of international families and its position as a gateway to broader European growth. Following Monaco, further expansions are set for the UK, Switzerland, and Spain.

“What convinced us about GMNSM was the combination of a strong founder, clear customer value and a model that can travel across markets without losing the quality of the underlying experience. At VEYRA Capital, we also pay close attention to how businesses are built – the quality of execution, the discipline behind growth and the ability to create lasting value. Andrej and his team have demonstrated that, and we believe this round can help them turn a proven concept into a much larger international platform," said Konstantin Katsev, Venture Partner at VEYRA Capital. The investment reflects growing investor interest in businesses that combine education, technology and recurring membership models, particularly as Gulf families increase spending on children's development and extracurricular activities.

Press release:

Swvl Holdings Corp (Nasdaq: SWVL) (“Swvl” or the “Company”), a leading provider of technology-driven mobility solutions for enterprises and governments, today announced that it has entered into a definitive securities purchase agreement for a $13 million private placement (the “PIPE”) led by Coefficient LP (“Coefficient”), a U.S. investment firm headquartered in Houston, Texas, which is backed by the Sawiris family of Cairo, Egypt. Coefficient has agreed to invest $10 million in the PIPE offering. Upon closing, Coefficient will become Swvl’s largest institutional shareholder. The round also includes a $3 million investment from an existing shareholder of Swvl that is deepening its position. In connection with the investment, Abdalla Ali, Founder and Managing Partner of Coefficient, will join Swvl's Board of Directors.

Under the terms of the agreement, Swvl will issue 8,990,317 Class A shares at a purchase price of $1.446 per share. The transaction is expected to close on August 27, 2026, subject to customary closing conditions.

The investment comes on the back of accelerating performance: in the first quarter of 2026, Swvl grew revenue compared to the first quarter of 2025 to 68% year-over-year to $8.2 million, with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) revenue up 111%, recurring revenue at 88% of total, net dollar retention of 114%, dollar-pegged revenue rising to 44% of total, and operating expenses falling to 23% of revenue as the Company approaches operating breakeven.

Swvl intends to use the net proceeds from the offering to accelerate Swvl’s expansion in the United States; to kickstart its lending offering for the transport operators and partners in its network, and to strengthen the balance sheet to support the Company’s growing pipeline of multi-year enterprise and government contracts.

“We view this investment as powering Swvl’s next chapter, cutting the ribbon on the U.S. market as we have just started our U.S. operations,” said Mostafa Kandil, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Swvl. “We believe that our results demonstrate that Swvl’s enterprise-first model can scale profitably, with revenue growing 68% in the first quarter of 2026 while operating expenses remained at just 23% of revenue. With this investment, we have partners with deep roots in the United States and across our existing markets, and with Abdalla joining our board, we believe that we have the capital, the alignment and the reach to bring Swvl’s platform to its largest market yet.”

“Our family has always backed builders — founders creating businesses that compound for decades aligns with our investment thesis,” said Onsi Sawiris. “Mostafa and his team have built a disciplined technology operator serving enterprises and governments across seven countries, and the business model and anticipated expansion provide a promising foundation for the company's future. We are proud to stand behind a founder building a global company, and we are investing for the long term.”

“AI is transforming how the world’s systems move information. But mass transportation, the system that moves people, has lagged behind in most cities around the world. Mobilising humanity — to work, to school, to healthcare, to opportunity — remains one of the last major operations still run manually,” said Abdalla Ali, Founder and Managing Partner of Coefficient. “Swvl turns moving people into intelligent, managed infrastructure. It does this not by adding fleets or concrete but with AI and orchestration that make existing capacity smarter, built on technology, operational expertise, and execution discipline proven with enterprises and governments across continents. And behind the platform is Mostafa, a founder whose journey speaks for itself. We are proud to support Swvl's next phase of growth, and I look forward to working alongside the board as the company builds its American business and widens the reach of its mission: mobilising people, intelligently.”

The securities described above are being offered in a private placement under Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and/or Regulation D promulgated thereunder and have not been registered under the Securities Act, or applicable state securities laws. Accordingly, the securities may not be offered or sold in the United States except pursuant to an effective registration statement or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and such applicable state securities laws. Pursuant to a registration rights agreement with Coefficient, the Company has agreed to file a resale registration statement covering the securities described above.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or other jurisdiction.

Press release:

UAE-based AI and geospatial intelligence  company Stellaria has closed an AED 25 million Seed Round, backed by a group of angel investors. The round values the company at AED 420 million and will support its next phase of growth, including scaling its AI operating system for geospatial intelligence, expanding its technical capabilities and team, and accelerating the deployment of its solutions across the UAE and international markets.

Stellaria is building an AI operating system for geospatial intelligence, designed to transform satellite imagery and other geospatial data into actionable intelligence through a unified AI-powered platform. The technology brings together geospatial data, advanced AI models and analytical workflows to enable users to detect, analyse and understand activity across the physical world. Its capabilities include AI-powered satellite imagery analytics, super-resolution, automated target recognition, maritime and port intelligence, satellite-derived bathymetry, environmental monitoring and its proprietary Stella  platform.

Dr. Ali AlHammadi, Founder and CEO of Stellaria, said: “This funding marks an important milestone in Stellaria’s journey and reflects the confidence our investors have placed in our technology and the team behind it. We have grown from a UAE startup into a company building an AI operating system for geospatial intelligence, bringing together satellite data, AI and advanced analytics within a unified platform. This next phase will allow us to invest further in our technology, strengthen our team and build scalable products that can compete internationally. Our ambition is to build globally relevant space and AI technology from the UAE and contribute to the country’s growing position as a hub for advanced innovation.”

Stellaria’s (formerly Farmin) growth also reflects the wider development of the UAE’s innovation ecosystem and the role that sustained ecosystem support can play in helping high-potential businesses build capabilities and scale. It is also an alumnus of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Innovation Fund’s Innovation Accelerator Program, where it benefited from tailored mentorship, strategic guidance and ecosystem connections designed to support innovative businesses as they develop and scale. The company has since continued to broaden its capabilities across space, AI and geospatial intelligence, with applications spanning government, defence, maritime and ports, infrastructure and environmental monitoring.

The latest funding round will support Stellaria’s growth trajectory, with a focus on strengthening UAE-developed technology, attracting specialised talent and scaling its solutions into new markets.

Press release:

Raff, a Saudi-based technology platform simplifying distribution and inventory management by connecting consumer brands directly with retailers, today announced the closing of its $1.7 million pre-seed funding round, led by Vision Ventures, with participation from 500 Global, Palm VC, Oqal Group, Salman Butt (Co-founder of Salla), among others.

The funding will support Raff's regional expansion across the GCC while accelerating product development and AI capabilities as the company continues to simplify how consumer brands expand into physical retail.

Digital platforms and marketplaces have made it easier for consumer brands across the GCC to launch and grow online. However, expanding into offline retail remains a fragmented, time-consuming, and expensive process, requiring separate onboarding, logistics, and commercial relationships with each retailer. The opportunity is massive, with the GCC retail market valued at more than $300 billion a year.

Raff addresses this challenge through an end-to-end platform that digitises distribution, commercial operations, inventory management, order fulfilment, and payments, making it easier for brands to expand their presence across physical retail channels. For retailers, the platform automates key workflows and simplifies the management of a growing vendor network, while integrating with leading point-of-sale and accounting software in the region, allowing them to spend more time growing their businesses.

The startup was founded in 2024 by Ali Al Qudah and Abdul Kareem Munla, bringing together experience across e-commerce, technology, finance, and business operations. Al Qudah previously built and scaled two e-commerce brands before joining Saudi e-commerce company Salla as an early employee and later serving as Head of Growth at legal-tech startup Qanoniah. Munla brings more than 20 years of experience in financial management and business operations, spanning financial transformation, governance, compliance, and operational efficiency across multiple sectors.

Ali Al Qudah, Co-Founder and CEO of Raff, said: "We built Raff after experiencing firsthand how difficult it was for growing brands to move beyond online sales. While the barriers to launching an e-commerce business have never been lower, reaching customers through physical retail still requires brands to navigate multiple operational and commercial hurdles. Our mission is to simplify that journey and give brands a faster and more efficient way to reach offline customers. This investment enables us to accelerate that vision, expand across the GCC, and continue building the infrastructure powering the next generation of retail."

Kais Al-Essa, Founding Partner and CEO of Vision Ventures, added: "We are excited to partner with Ali and the Raff team as they represent the caliber of high-execution talent that we look for. We previously supported the shift from offline to online through our early investment in Salla. Today, we see an equally significant opportunity as brands look to expand from online into physical retail. Raff is solving a high-friction challenge at the intersection of retail technology and logistics, creating a new efficiency layer for commerce across the region. We are proud to lead this round and support the team's ambitious vision."

Since launching less than 18 months ago, Raff has enabled more than 900 brands across nine countries, spanning the GCC and the UK, to grow their presence through physical retail channels.

Press release:

Qatar-based restaurant technology startup DineNORDER has expanded into Egypt, bringing its suite of digital restaurant management tools to the market as part of a broader regional growth strategy.

Founded in 2023, DineNORDER develops technology designed to help restaurants manage their operations through an integrated digital platform. Its offering includes online ordering, point-of-sale technology, reservation systems, marketing tools, customer insights and inventory management.

The platform brings together tools for managing orders, payments, customer interactions and other day-to-day restaurant operations, targeting businesses seeking to digitise their workflows and customer experience.

DineNORDER said its entry into Egypt forms part of its regional expansion strategy. As it establishes its presence in the country, the company plans to engage with local restaurant businesses, technology partners and talent.

“Egypt represents an exciting market for us, and we look forward to bringing our smart digital solutions to restaurants,” said Anja Miscevic, product manager at DineNORDER.

DineNORDER is incubated at Qatar Science & Technology Park, and positions its technology as an integrated operating toolkit for restaurants, spanning ordering and reservations through to marketing and inventory management.

Press release:

Fasset, the AI-powered stablecoin neobanking platform, today announced it has raised $68 million in Series C funding at a $1 billion valuation. The financing was led by SBI Group and follows Fasset’s $51 million Series B earlier this year, which brought Speedinvest onto the cap table alongside a group of strategic investors.

The new capital will support the expansion of Own Network, Fasset’s regulated financial network that connects banks, telcos, payment and liquidity providers to enable settlement across international markets. Fasset will also increase investment in agentic AI-enabled systems supporting corridor banking, stablecoin settlement and tokenised asset infrastructure.

After raising Series B in May, Fasset has now raised a total of $119 million in 2026. The financing marks Fasset’s entry into the global fintech unicorn category.

"Fasset's vision of a world in which money moves across borders as easily as information does points in the same direction as the on-chain economic zone that the SBI Group seeks to realise through digital finance. Fasset has already built a strong business foundation and a robust regulatory framework in a number of emerging markets with significant long-term growth potential. It was therefore in the conviction that Fasset can serve as an important financial bridge connecting Japan with high-growth markets around the world that we decided to lead this round. Within the SBI Group's "SBI APAC Digital Economic Zone" concept as well, an international remittance and settlement infrastructure built on stablecoins is a core component. Together with Fasset, we will advance the development of the next generation of on-chain financial systems, extending from the Asia-Pacific region to the Middle East and Africa." said Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director, Chairman, President & CEO, SBI Holdings, Inc.

The investment expands Fasset’s relationship with SBI Group, one of Japan’s leading comprehensive financial groups, spanning banking, securities, asset management, and private equity, with investments in companies including Ripple, Circle, and Morpho and in group companies including B2C2.

“The next phase is about any-to-any banking. Any person to any person. Any asset to any asset. Any rail to any rail, anywhere. We built Fasset to address a simple problem: access to financial opportunity still depends too heavily on where someone lives and the financial system available to them,” said Mohammad Raafi Hossain, Co-Founder and CEO of Fasset. “The banking system is broken. It’s not enough to build another financial front on current rails. We are investing deeper into the stack, from licences in emerging markets to enabling agentic payments, to rebuild the way we do banking from the ground up.”

“Having SBI Group lead this round speeds up our ability to serve the world by having access to the wider SBI financial ecosystem and their partners, including our previously announced partnership with SBI Remit, enabling us to leverage an extensive network that supports bank account remittances to approximately 200 countries.”

“Fasset is building the regulated infrastructure that helps people and businesses in growth markets access stablecoins, global assets and cross-border rails. That access is still too often shaped by geography. Raafi, Daniel and the team are changing that, and we are proud to have continued backing Fasset as it scales globally,” said Stefan Klestil, General Partner at Speedinvest.

Building a Financial System Around Ownership

Fasset provides financial access that allows customers to receive, hold, move, spend and invest across currencies, markets and asset classes.

Underpinning those products is Own Network, Fasset’s financial infrastructure connecting local banking systems, payment providers, financial institutions, telcos, liquidity providers, custody partners and settlement networks across more than 100 banking corridors.

Stablecoins are used within parts of the network as settlement infrastructure, allowing value to move between markets more efficiently where appropriate. Customers interact with Fasset through financial products and accounts rather than needing to manage the underlying settlement infrastructure themselves.

The company uses AI to improve how transactions are routed across payment rails, currencies, liquidity providers, and settlement methods, based on factors including cost, speed, and availability.

Fasset is built around a simple conviction: where someone is born should not determine the quality of money they can hold, the markets they can access or the assets they can own. The company is not building another interface on top of the existing financial system. It is building the infrastructure intended to replace it.

Scaling Global Infrastructure: $40B Annualized Volume

Fasset now processes more than $40 billion in annualised transaction volume, serving more than 3 million wallets across 125 countries and over 1,000 enterprises globally.

Its consumer, business and institutional products are supported by a regulatory footprint across the GCC, Asia, Europe and other international markets.

The Series C will support Fasset’s continued development as a global, AI-powered stablecoin neobanking platform, combining regulated local infrastructure, modern settlement technology and access to global assets through a single financial account.

Press release:

US-based enterprise AI startup Twin1 AI has raised $20 million in a Seed round co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Tribeca Venture Partners and Saudi-based Aramco Ventures as the company emerges from stealth to scale its AI-powered digital twin platform.

The round also saw participation from EJF Ventures, Tin Alley Ventures, AGI House Ventures, Neo, F-Prime, Btech Consortium, Antiportfolio Ventures, Lakestar, Notion Capital, Insiders and other investors.

Founded in 2025 by Dr Lewis Z. Liu, Tom Cahn, Huiting Liu and Dr Jonathan Budd, Twin1 AI is developing what it describes as a coordination and trust layer for enterprise AI. Its platform creates an AI-powered digital twin for individual professionals, drawing on their work context to preserve and make their expertise accessible across an organisation.

The digital twins can draw on approved workplace information, including emails, meetings, documents and other systems. The platform integrates with tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Gmail, Google Drive and SharePoint.

Twin1 AI also incorporates privacy and governance controls that determine what information each digital twin can access and share. Its Twin Network connects individual twins to help identify relevant colleagues, retrieve permission-aware knowledge and coordinate work across an organisation.

The company has begun deploying its technology across organisations in sectors including legal services, financial services and energy.

Twin1 AI will use the new capital to expand its teams in San Mateo, California, and London, invest in its go-to-market operations and continue developing its core technology. 

At the end of this month, Riyadh will host the fifth edition of LEAP. It is easy to forget how unlikely the first one felt back in 2022. A brand-new technology conference drew more than 100,000 registered attendees from over 80 countries to Saudi Arabia.

Nobody is asking whether LEAP can attract an audience now. Last year’s edition drew more than 200,000 attendees and opened with $14.9 billion in AI investment announcements on its first day. Those announcements pushed the total value of technology-related infrastructure investment announced in Saudi Arabia since LEAP debuted past $42.4 billion. The event has settled one argument: Saudi Arabia, and increasingly the wider region, can attract capital, companies, and attention on an enormous scale.

That is exactly why I will be watching this year’s edition through a different lens. The interesting question in Riyadh is no longer how much is being invested. It is what that investment actually produces: technology that gets deployed, products genuinely built in the region and, above all, people capable of building and sustaining them.

Every announcement from the main stage can be held against that filter. Four areas will tell us the most: infrastructure, agentic AI, Arabic-first products and talent.

The first is infrastructure, although I suspect the headline numbers will tell us less than they used to. I expect more data centres, more cloud capacity, more chip deals and another chapter in the HUMAIN story – fitting in a year Saudi Arabia has formally designated its Year of Artificial Intelligence. HUMAIN itself was launched in 2025 to operate across the AI stack, from data centres and cloud infrastructure to models and applications.

The progress is real. In only a few years, the Gulf has moved from being primarily a buyer of global technology to building a serious part of the infrastructure behind it.

But buying compute is something the Gulf has already proved it can do. The more revealing question is what happens after the infrastructure switches on.

Who is building products on the capacity announced a year ago? Who deploys them inside companies and government agencies? Who is still there six months later, addressing the less glamorous problems that never appear in a press release?

Gigawatts are an input. This year, I want to hear about outputs.

The second is agentic AI, because agents are where deployment either happens or it does not. At recent events, agents mostly lived in demonstrations and keynote videos. The conversations I am hearing now are different. Companies are asking about integration schedules, costs and ownership. Government organisations are asking where agents can run inside real services rather than controlled experiments.

The UAE has gone furthest. Since January, its National Artificial Intelligence System has served as an advisory member of the Cabinet, the Ministerial Development Council and the boards of federal entities and government companies. In June, the UAE went further, establishing an Artificial Intelligence and Data Authority whose mandate explicitly includes a unified digital government system using agentic AI.

So at DeepFest, which runs alongside LEAP, I will be listening for fewer presentations about what agents may eventually do and more examples of where they already run, what they cost and whether they work.

Deployments are evidence. Demos are not.

The third is Arabic-first technology, because it separates products built for this region from products merely sold to it.

For a long time, Arabic support appeared somewhere near the end of a product presentation. It was treated as a localisation task: build the product in English, translate the interface and declare the region covered. The results were often technically functional but culturally weak.

That is becoming harder to defend. The models have improved, governments are asking for technology designed around local needs, and a language used daily by more than 400 million people cannot seriously be treated as a niche.

If this is the year when products designed in Arabic, for Arabic-speaking users, reach the main stages rather than a corner of the exhibition hall, it will signal something larger than better language support. It will mean the region is starting to produce more of its own technology, not simply procure it.

It will also change who can take part in building here.

Which brings me to the fourth and hardest area, and the one I care about most: talent.

Talent will be discussed constantly at LEAP. It always is, and the initiatives behind the discussion are serious. Saudi Arabia’s national data and AI strategy aims to train and qualify more than 20,000 data and AI specialists by 2030. More recent figures from SDAIA put the number of specialists and experts reached through its training programmes at 14,495.

Its SAMAI initiative passed one million citizens trained in AI last year, and the second phase has expanded into 11 government ministries, with an emphasis on practical adoption in the workplace. The UAE, meanwhile, launched its National Programme for Coders with a scheme to grant golden visas to 100,000 coders, including people living outside the country.

Yet the global competition for those skills remains sobering. IDC estimated that by 2026 more than 90 per cent of organisations worldwide would feel the effects of the IT skills crisis, with $5.5 trillion in losses caused by product delays, impaired competitiveness and lost business. AI skills were identified as the most in-demand among enterprises surveyed.

In practice, the situation means the Gulf is competing for the same scarce technical talent as the United States, Europe, India and every company that has decided it needs an AI team.

Attracting people to the region is necessary, particularly now. But it cannot be the only plan. If sovereign AI depends indefinitely on imported expertise, then an important part of that sovereignty remains outside the country.

The frustrating part is that no keynote can fix this issue. A government can fund a data centre or license a model. But you cannot sign an MoU that brings an experienced engineer into existence. Ten years of production experience cannot be procured in time for the next conference.

Something has changed over the past 18 months, though, and I think it deserves much more attention than it is getting.

The entry point into software has moved

A founder in Jeddah who understands logistics, or a doctor in Dubai who knows exactly where clinics waste time, can now describe an idea in ordinary language and have a working version of it by the end of the day.

Andrej Karpathy coined the unfortunate phrase “vibe coding” in early 2025 for one version of this way of building. I do not particularly like the phrase, but the change behind it is real.

Within weeks, Y Combinator partners said that for roughly a quarter of the companies in its Winter 2025 batch, about 95 per cent of the code was AI-generated. Importantly, YC also stressed that these founders were highly technical; AI was changing how they built, not eliminating the need to understand what they were building.

At the other end of the spectrum, Replit chief executive Amjad Masad said 75 per cent of the platform’s customers never write a single line of code. Software creation is increasingly expanding beyond the people who learned to build it in the traditional way.

Of course, generated code does not remove the need for engineers. Quite often, it proves why they are needed.

The first version works. Then the product meets real users, real data and real security requirements, and architecture, reliability and maintenance stop being abstract words. Even as Y Combinator highlighted the amount of AI-generated code in its latest companies, its partners were careful to make the same point: founders still need enough technical depth to understand the code and find the bugs.

I have watched people go through this process. They build something small, discover its limits and start asking much better questions. They learn because they finally have a real project in front of them, not because somebody gave them another introductory course.

Some bring senior engineers into the project. Some become capable technical leaders themselves. In both cases, the project becomes the beginning of their technical education.

This is why I think the shift belongs at the centre of the region’s talent conversation rather than at its margins.

The Gulf does not need every future founder to spend 10 years becoming a software engineer before testing an idea. It needs far more people with local knowledge to begin building and enough experienced engineers around them to turn the good ideas into dependable products.

Banks running innovation programmes, universities designing capstone projects, ministries procuring software and large companies retraining their staff can all treat first-time builders as the beginning of a talent pipeline rather than a curiosity.

The Gulf has spent the past few years securing access to compute. The next few will be judged on whether that access produces more builders, more products and more companies created here.

The number I would like to hear

LEAP 2026 will be impressive; that much is safe to say. The halls will be full, the schedule will be dense, and the announcements will once again be counted in billions.

But there is another number I would like to hear from the opening stage: How many people in this region built and released software for the first time during the past year?

Not how many attended an AI course or opened a coding assistant, but how many made something another person could actually use.

It is the one number that connects everything above.

It tells you whether the data centres have tenants, whether the agents have owners and whether Arabic-first products have makers.

People will once again describe chips as the new oil. Perhaps they are. But access to chips will not decide which countries build the strongest technology economies. The more important question is what people create with them.

When LEAP begins measuring new builders alongside deals and infrastructure, we will know that the region’s sovereign AI plans are becoming more than an investment story.

See you in Riyadh.

Press release:

XSquare, a business-to-business (B2B) payments company operating in partnership with Mastercard, today announced the successful close of its Pre-Seed funding round. The round had participation from Raed Ventures, AngelSpark, 500 Global and Oraseya Capital, the venture capital arm of Dubai Integrated Economic Zones.

With the new capital, XSquare is scaling what it describes as the region's first and only payment orchestration layer built purely for B2B. The platform unifies multiple payment rails behind a single integration, allowing businesses to collect, pay and reconcile across providers without stitching together separate systems. XSquare is launching with rails from Telr, Geidea, VaultsPay, Spare and Tess Payments, with further partners to follow.

Under its partnership with Mastercard, the company is also bringing Mastercard's B2B payments product to market, enabling card-funded supplier and vendor payments that settle directly to bank accounts. XSquare is deploying the program with marquee government and large corporate clients, unlocking commercial card economics on business spend that has traditionally sat outside the card ecosystem.

Beyond its UAE base, XSquare is live in Qatar, where it holds a presence at the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) and is partnering with leading banks and regulated payment partners in Doha. The Qatar launch marks the company’s first cross-border expansion and lays the groundwork for a wider GCC footprint.

“B2B payments in this region have been underserved for too long, forced onto tools built for consumer markets. We are building the payment infrastructure that regional businesses need: card and bank rails, orchestration and reconciliation, all in one place. Having Raed Ventures, AngelSpark, 500 Global and Oraseya Capital participate in this round is a strong endorsement of that vision and of the traction we are seeing with Banks, Government entities and large Corporates.”

Tanvir Shah, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, XSquare

“We like to back companies that build enabling infrastructure for the region’s digital economy and are led by teams with strong founder-market fit. XSquare is building critical infrastructure for the largely underserved B2B payments market, and Tanvir and Ashwin have the experience and relationships required to build and scale in this market. We’re excited to back them and look forward to supporting their expansion across the region.”

Saed Nashef, Founding Partner, Raed Ventures

XSquare plans to use the funding to expand its rail and bank partnerships, grow its engineering and commercial teams, and begin operations in Saudi Arabia.

Press release:

Oman-based venture capital firm Cyfr Capital has completed five new investments through its Seed Fund in collaboration with Future Fund Oman, backing startups operating across automotive commerce, food delivery, tourism, artificial intelligence and food packaging.

The five companies are Sooq Cars, iO Eats, Darrbak, Decoil and Pack’N. The investments form part of Cyfr Capital’s strategy to support early-stage companies developing products and services for the Omani market with potential to scale.

Sooq Cars operates an automotive trading platform serving Oman and the wider Gulf. Its services span vehicles available from stock, imports, spare parts and leasing, and the company has a user base exceeding one million, according to Cyfr Capital.

iO Eats operates a food delivery application supported by cloud kitchens across six locations. The platform allows users to order from more than 30 restaurants in a single basket.

Darrbak operates a tourism discovery and booking platform in Oman, offering more than 260 experiences across adventure, sports, nature, arts and culture. It works with more than 76 local providers.

Decoil develops data and artificial intelligence solutions designed to help organisations process unstructured data and convert it into actionable insights.

Pack’N operates in the food and beverage sector, providing customised packaging and smart storage solutions to businesses.

The investments are intended to provide the five companies with capital to develop their products and services and expand their operations, as part of the collaboration between Cyfr Capital and Future Fund Oman to support early-stage businesses in the Sultanate.

The parties did not disclose the value of the individual investments, the total amount invested or the equity stakes acquired in the five companies.

Press release:

AILA, a Saudi education technology company focused on AI-powered personalised learning, has raised $3 million in a pre-Series A funding round. 

The round was led by Rua Growth Fund, with participation from Jo Academy, 500 Global, Bunat VC, and Fikr Ventures. Jo Academy, a leading EdTech pioneer in Jordan with a growing regional presence, also joined the round as a strategic investor, bringing valuable experience in education and digital learning. 

AILA develops technology that helps students learn based on their individual needs. Its platform identifies learning gaps, personalises learning and practice, and provides students with support based on their progress. It also gives teachers and school leaders clearer insights into student performance, helping them identify where support is needed. 

The company’s products include AILA Tests, an AI-native learning platform for personalised exam preparation for schools, and AILA Labs, AILA’s dedicated R&D hub focused on researching, developing, and testing new AI-powered solutions for education. 

The new funding will support AILA across three main areas: 

● Expanding into new regional and international markets 

● Further developing the product’s AI-powered learning experience and capabilities 

● Reaching more students, educators, schools, and education systems 

“This investment lets us bring personalised, AI-native learning to more students at a moment when education systems across the region are rethinking what's possible with technology," said Yousef Alsayed, CEO of AILA.

"Arabic-speaking students deserve learning experiences built for them, not just translated for them. AILA is leading the way in the region, building AI-native education from the ground up, and their traction with Saudi schools speaks volumes about its strong product-market fit. We invested in AILA because we believe the future of EdTech in this region will be built here, by local innovators like AILA," said Alaa Jarrar, CEO, Jo Academy. 

AILA is building an AI-native assessment platform that helps schools and teachers understand each student’s proficiency, identify learning gaps, and focus support where it is needed most. We were drawn to the team’s ability to turn assessment data into actionable insights for educators and targeted practice for students. Rua is proud to lead this round and support Yousef, Abdulaziz, and the AILA team as they scale Saudi-built AI education solutions for schools and education systems across the region and beyond," said Turki Aljoaib, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Rua Growth Fund. 

The investment marks the next stage of AILA’s growth. Alongside financial support, the investor group brings experience, networks, and market knowledge that can help the company enter new markets and build partnerships across the education sector. 

AILA’s long-term goal is to become a leading AI-native education platform and make high-quality personalised learning accessible to learners at scale. 

Press release:

HeyBreez, the operational layer for enterprise voice AI, announces an oversubscribed $2.5 million seed fundraise. 

The raise was led by Lunara Partners – a multi-stage investment firm investing in tech & tech-enabled businesses, chiefly across the MENA region. Other participating investors included Jabbar Group, DASH Ventures, and prominent founders and strategic angel investors. 

The proceeds will be used to deepen platform infrastructure; accelerate product development; and grow the team for sales expansion across enterprises, agencies and developers in the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East. Timing of the seed round has been driven entirely by market demand, to keep pace with the growth in call volumes and inbound requests for HeyBreez’s services.

HeyBreez is flourishing in a market where Voice AI has reached human parity (i.e., artificial intelligence systems now match or exceed human capabilities in recognising, generating, or translating speech). However, the infrastructure to run Voice AI at enterprise scale has not been reached – which is where HeyBreez excels. 

Most voice platforms get the agent talking, then hand back the rest. HeyBreez sits at the operational layer; the part that handles everything around and after the call: retries; callbacks; follow-up logic; branching journeys; telephony; and integrations. These are the workflows that transform a voice agent into a real business process – able to run reliable, low-latency conversations at production scale.

Karim Malhas, Founder & CEO of HeyBreez, said:

"Everyone in this market helped companies make the call. No one helped them run the operation behind it. That is the hard part, and what we built for from day one. This round lets us put HeyBreez in front of all the teams needing it and asking for it. We have a proven product, several different customer types, we’re logging over a million calls a month already, and there is much more to come.” 

HeyBreez is already achieving significant traction, proving its enterprise-grade production output. In a single month, its platform has run over one million calls. Campaign dialling on the platform easily reaches 10,000 calls a day for individual clients.

HeyBreez serves four customer types via a single infrastructure: enterprise clients with dedicated solution support; agencies and resellers building on top of the platform; individual developers and small businesses on self-serve plans; and regional AI players embedding the technology directly into their own products. HeyBreez supports multi-language voice workloads across industries where voice is still the dominant channel, such as: banking, healthcare, logistics, hospitality, and customer experience. 

HeyBreez is building impressive partnerships to build out its channel. Arabic.ai and Xaia are solutions integration partners, reselling HeyBreez to their own enterprise client bases across the region. HeyBreez expects more such partnerships to extend its reach into new markets and verticals, without requiring relationship-building from scratch.

Said Murad, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Lunara Partners, commented:

"Every platform in this market solved the conversation. Almost none solved the operation around it, the retries, callbacks, integrations, and governance that determine whether voice agents hold up in production. HeyBreez was built for that layer from day one, and the volume already running through the platform shows it. With a multi-channel commercial model and positioning aligned with the rise of Arabic-language and sovereign-cloud voice AI, we believe HeyBreez can become a core piece of the enterprise voice stack globally." 

HeyBreez is formally headquartered in the US with offices in Amman and Dubai and is designed for global deployment. The MENA region is its commercial starting point, supported by rising demand for Arabic-language voice automation and the sovereign-cloud and data-residency mandates being shaped by the GCC’s national champions. The platform is already running across MENA, Europe, the USA, and LATAM. Arabic is now getting the voice infrastructure it deserves, while also creating a platform built to run anywhere.

Press release:

Iraq-based e-commerce startup Rozenama has raised $150,000 in a pre-Seed round from Iraqi entrepreneur and Aljasmi Perfumes CEO Mohammed Haider.

Founded in Baghdad in 2022 by Abbas Muhil and Mohammed Fawzi, Rozenama provides an e-commerce platform built for Iraqi merchants. Its infrastructure incorporates local delivery companies and payment methods, including cash on delivery.

The company is targeting a market where many retailers continue to sell through social media platforms such as Instagram and WhatsApp, receiving orders through direct messages and manually managing inventory. Rozenama is seeking to bring these processes into a structured digital system that enables merchants to manage and scale their online operations.

Over the past 12 months, Rozenama says its number of active merchants has increased from 250 to more than 900, while registered users have surpassed 13,000.

The company plans to launch a fully rebuilt version of its platform on 25 August 2026.

Proceeds from the round will primarily be invested in engineering, including the platform rebuild, and expanding Rozenama’s merchant base across Iraqi governorates outside Baghdad. The company said markets outside the capital have accounted for most of its growth over the past six months.

Press release:

Tax Star, the UAE's first AI-powered corporate tax software platform, announced it has closed a $1.75 million seed funding round. The raise comes as Tax Star positions itself around one of its most significant regulatory milestones to date, its status as a pre-approved Accredited Service Provider (ASP) for UAE e-invoicing. The round was backed primarily by angel investors.     

Tax Star built its reputation as the first AI-powered corporate tax compliance software in the UAE, helping businesses navigate the country's evolving tax landscape with automation and intelligence at the core of its product. This new funding builds directly on that foundation, with the company now doubling down on its role in the UAE's e-invoicing rollout, a mandate that will require businesses across the UAE to appoint an ASP and implement a compliant e-invoicing process connected to the UAE Electronic Invoicing System.

As a pre-approved ASP, Tax Star is positioned to serve as a trusted bridge between businesses and the UAE's e-invoicing infrastructure. Being pre-approved validates Tax Star's technical readiness ahead of key regulatory deadlines and signals to the market that the company is positioned to capture demand as UAE businesses work to become compliant.

Proceeds from the round will be directed toward three core areas: go-to-market expansion, product development, and simplifying compliance for businesses navigating the UAE's e-invoicing requirements. Rather than allocating the raise narrowly toward specific accounting-software integrations or new-market entry alone, Tax Star said the funding is designed to strengthen the of what businesses need to become, and stay, compliant.

The raise also supports Tax Star's broader regional ambitions. The company has stated plans to expand into the GCC     as part of its longer-term roadmap. The UAE's e-invoicing framework and Tax Star's early positioning within it, is expected to serve as proof as the company pursues similar opportunities in other markets undergoing their own digital tax transformations.

Tax Star also acknowledges that being part of the Plug and Play and Dubai Founders HQ (DFHQ) start-up program helped Tax Star to prepare themselves for this investment round and helped refine its future expansion plans. The company is also part of the Microsoft for Startups Program and is aspiring to join Dubai's D33 initiative.

The timing of the raise aligns with a fast-approaching regulatory calendar. Businesses in the UAE with annual revenue of AED 50 million or more      face an ASP- appointment deadline of October 30, 2026, ahead of the first mandatory implementation phase for businesses with annual revenue of AED 50 million or more in January 2027. Tax Star said the new funding is intended to help ensure UAE businesses, regardless of size, are equipped to meet these deadlines without disruption to their operations.

"This funding allows us to focus on what matters most right now: easing the compliance burden for businesses across the GCC as e-invoicing becomes a reality," said Rayhan Aleem, Co-founder and CEO of Tax Star. "Being a pre-approved ASP puts us in a strong position to support businesses through this transition, and this raise lets us invest in the team, the product, and the go-to-market work needed to do that at scale."

Tax Star is the UAE's first AI-powered corporate tax software platform and a pre-approved Accredited Service Provider for UAE e-invoicing. The company is also the only Accredited Service Provider listed on the Xero and QuickBooks App Stores offering native integration with those accounting platforms, alongside smooth integrations with Zoho, Odoo, and Naqood. Tax Star helps businesses simplify tax and compliance obligations through automation and AI, with plans to expand its footprint across the GCC and into Europe.

Press release:

Exits MENA, the region’s first investment platform and advisory firm focusing on startups and SMEs, today announced the signing of a multi-seven-figure transaction in partnership with ACE’s existing local management to acquire Avanz Capital Egypt (ACE), a private equity and asset management firm.

With initial approval from Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA), the transaction represents an important milestone in Exits MENA’s strategy to build an integrated financial group serving investors, startups, SMEs, and financial institutions across Egypt and the wider MENA region.

Under the agreement, ACE’s existing management team, led by CEO and Managing Director Haytham Wagih, will remain in place and retain responsibility for the firm’s operations and investment activities.

The structure is designed to provide existing investors and clients of ACE with continuity, alignment, and confidence in line with international private equity standards, while creating a stronger platform for developing scalable and impactful private capital opportunities.

Avanz Capital Egypt has established a recognised position within Egypt’s private equity ecosystem, with a mandate focused on supporting SMEs and strengthening the country’s private equity and venture capital landscape. Its experience will complement Exits MENA’s advisory capabilities and regional network, creating a more connected platform that combines access to attractive investment opportunities and competitive risk-adjusted returns for investors with long-term value creation across portfolio companies.

“We are now better aligned through ownership participation. Our team remains in place and will continue to expand. Our investment process remains unchanged,” said Haytham Wagih, Managing Director and CEO of Avanz Capital Egypt. “What changes is our capacity to grow and retain key talent. We are delighted to welcome Dr. Nader Elsayed as a shareholder and Executive Director. In contrast, Masa Arafa will continue her leading role as Investment Director with ownership alignment. With Exits MENA, we now have a broader regional platform behind us while developing the way we manage the firm and its portfolio.”

Founded in 2022 by Mohamed Abuelnaga Nagaty, Ayman El Tanbouly, and Ahella El Saban, Exits MENA has expanded its footprint into more than seven global markets. The company has built a strong track record across investment transactions and strategic advisory engagements, supported by a growing network of regional and international partners, having established more than 75 global partnerships, launched three ongoing investment-readiness programmes, and supported more than 2,000 businesses across the region.

“This acquisition marks a defining step in Exits MENA’s journey to build an integrated financial group serving the region. Since 2022, we have worked with businesses across different stages of growth and consistently seen the need for a more connected pathway between investment readiness, advisory services, and access to capital. By bringing private equity and asset management capabilities into our platform, we are completing the ecosystem we set out to build for founders, SMEs, investors, and institutional partners. We believe this model will deliver stronger outcomes for limited partners and portfolio companies while contributing to the long-term development of Egypt’s private capital market,” said the Exits MENA founding team.

The acquisition reinforces Exits MENA’s broader strategy to strengthen the region’s private capital ecosystem by providing investors with access to viable, scalable investment opportunities across Egypt and the MENA region while supporting the development of deeper, more efficient private capital and exit markets.

The expanded platform brings together advisory, private equity, and asset management capabilities under one group, while maintaining strict separation between advisory mandates and investment decision-making to ensure independence, governance, and alignment with investors’ interests.

The next milestone is the rebranding of ACE to Exits Manara as the private capital and asset management subsidiary of Exits MENA. Exits Manara will continue to focus on the management and growth of Manara 1, the existing fund of funds dedicated to SMEs, and will expand AUMs through the establishment of Manara 2 for Export Investments, a new investment vehicle focusing on developing mid-sized exporting businesses to expand into international markets.

The acquisition comes amid a persistent financing challenge facing SMEs and high-growth businesses across MENA. According to the World Bank, SMEs in the region receive approximately 8% of total bank credit, compared with 22% in high-income economies. At the same time, CGAP estimates that the Arab world’s overall SME finance gap stands at approximately $123 billion.

Repeated geopolitical shocks have exposed and exacerbated pre-existing vulnerabilities, not only in fragile economies but also across the historically more stable Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Addressing the region’s economic challenges will require more than macroeconomic or public-sector reforms. Its longer-term development — including reconstruction and economic recovery in conflict-affected countries — will also depend on unlocking the potential of businesses that can become engines of job creation and catalysts for regional and global competitiveness.

The region’s challenge is not simply a shortage of capital. It is also the absence, in many markets, of the platforms, institutions and enabling environments needed to channel that capital toward scalable businesses and commercially sustainable opportunities. Ultimately, the next phase of MENA’s economic growth will be defined not only by how much capital the region attracts, but by how effectively that capital is converted into productive capacity, competitive businesses and high-quality jobs.

MENA has no shortage of entrepreneurial talent or ambitious businesses across sectors, sizes and stages of growth. Venture capital has become an important source of financing for the region’s early-stage technology and tech-enabled startups. Yet a financing gap remains for established, medium-sized businesses that need growth capital, stronger governance and operational support to expand across markets. This is where private equity can play a much larger role, helping promising local businesses develop into regional champions and drivers of economic growth.

Beyond dealmaking

Private equity is often reduced to financial engineering: buying, restructuring and eventually selling privately held companies to generate returns for investors. But its potential economic contribution extends well beyond the transaction itself.

Growth-orientated private equity can provide longer-term capital while helping management teams improve operations, strengthen governance, build institutional capabilities, enter new markets and invest in productivity and innovation. For medium-sized businesses, this combination of capital and operational support can help overcome barriers to scale that bank lending or venture capital alone may not address.

That impact is not automatic. It depends on the investment horizon, capital structure and approach of the investor. But when capital is paired with operating discipline and a credible long-term growth strategy, private equity can help companies make the transition from successful local businesses to competitive regional enterprises.

Private equity is not new to MENA. Over the past two decades, the region has seen the emergence of increasingly sophisticated private equity investors, supported by institutional investors, sovereign wealth funds and family offices. According to MAGNiTT, disclosed private equity activity in MENA totalled $27.6 billion across 356 deals from 2020 to 2024. The UAE accounted for the largest share of transactions, while Saudi Arabia became an increasingly important market; together, the two countries accounted for 68% of regional private equity transactions over the five-year period.

These figures illustrate the growing role of private capital in financing businesses across sectors that will help shape the region’s economic future, including health care, financial services, logistics, manufacturing and energy.

Yet private equity activity remains heavily concentrated in the region’s largest and most developed investment markets. The question, then, is not whether private equity can work in MENA. It is how it can be deployed more broadly to support economic revival, deepen regional integration and generate development impact in markets where growth capital remains scarce.

Small and medium-sized enterprises make up the vast majority of formal-sector businesses across MENA. Helping the most promising among them become more productive and competitive can therefore be a powerful tool for job creation and economic growth.

This is particularly relevant in fragile economies such as Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, where businesses often face limited access to growth capital, fragmented ownership structures and weak links to regional and international markets. Strategically deployed private equity can help address some of these bottlenecks through recapitalisation, stronger corporate governance, consolidation, market expansion and access to regional networks.

Private equity’s multiyear investment horizon can also be particularly relevant for economies seeking to move toward higher-productivity and more export-orientated models of growth. But its success should ultimately be measured less by deal count or the volume of capital deployed than by whether those investments result in stronger companies, greater productivity and sustainable employment.

Building more integrated ecosystems

Strong investment ecosystems are built when governments, development finance institutions, sovereign wealth funds, local fund managers, entrepreneurs and institutional investors play complementary roles in reducing barriers and directing financial and technical resources toward productive businesses.

This is where private equity fits into the broader regional picture: as a bridge between large pools of capital and companies with the potential to scale.

Governments have a central role in creating the conditions that make this possible, from predictable regulation and investor protection to effective insolvency frameworks, competition policy and cross-border trade. But public investment cannot substitute for private risk capital, particularly the growth financing companies need to expand into new markets and industries.

Development finance institutions such as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) increasingly combine direct financing with blended finance, risk-sharing and private-capital mobilisation tools designed to make investment possible in markets or projects that might otherwise struggle to attract commercial capital.

These tools become particularly important in fragile economies, where the risk-return profile can deter institutional investors. Blended-finance structures, guarantees, risk-sharing facilities and co-investment platforms with credible local partners can lower some of those barriers and help create a pipeline of investable opportunities with clearer governance and exit pathways.

Regional sovereign wealth funds can play a similar catalytic role by acting as anchor investors, reducing perceived risk and attracting global institutional capital.

A recent example is Brookfield’s July 2026 first close of Brookfield Middle East Partners, a PIF-anchored private equity fund that raised approximately $2 billion from the Public Investment Fund and other global and regional institutional investors. The fund will target buyouts and growth investments across the Middle East, with a focus on the GCC and a goal of allocating 50% of its investments to Saudi Arabia.

The significance of such a fund is not simply its size. It demonstrates how sovereign anchor capital, global investment expertise and a regional mandate can be combined to build a larger pipeline of investable businesses and increase institutional confidence in the region.

Political instability will remain a major constraint on MENA’s economic potential. Private equity cannot, on its own, resolve fragility, institutional weakness or regulatory fragmentation. But stronger and more integrated investment ecosystems can help ensure that capital does more than circulate within the region’s already mature markets.

For the wealthier GCC economies, the challenge is increasingly to deploy capital in ways that deepen productive capacity and strengthen the private sector. For less-developed and fragile economies, it is to use local investment managers, development finance and risk-sharing structures to turn viable businesses into investable platforms capable of attracting long-term capital.

MENA’s next growth chapter will therefore depend not only on mobilising more money. It will depend on building the institutions and investment structures that convert capital into productive companies, regional champions and high-quality jobs.

That is where private equity can make its most consequential contribution.

Press release:

Saudi Arabia-based investment firm Pinnacle has launched a venture capital-focused fund targeting growth-stage companies and secondary investment opportunities in the Kingdom.

The fund will invest through both primary funding rounds and secondary transactions, providing investors with exposure to established Saudi growth companies while seeking to increase liquidity within the Kingdom’s venture capital ecosystem.

The launch comes as Saudi Arabia’s venture market enters a more mature phase, with a growing number of established and profitable growth-stage companies. However, Pinnacle argues that access to growth capital and exit opportunities is still more limited than in developed markets, which creates a gap between the maturity of the startup ecosystem and its liquidity infrastructure.

The fund aims to address this gap by providing growth capital, facilitating secondary transactions, and supporting the development of Saudi technology companies.

Its investment strategy will focus on technology businesses across several sectors where Pinnacle sees long-term growth drivers.

In fintech, the fund sees opportunities arising from regulatory developments and the ongoing shift towards digital financial services.

It will also target businesses benefiting from Riyadh’s development as a global city, including companies operating across housing, mobility, real estate and urban services.

E-commerce is another focus area, with Pinnacle identifying room for further growth as e-commerce penetration in Saudi Arabia remains below levels seen in more developed global markets.

The fund will also target health and lifestyle, particularly as greater health awareness drives demand for preventative care and related services.

Through this strategy, Pinnacle aims to provide growth capital to Saudi technology companies while supporting greater liquidity and secondary-market activity within the Kingdom’s venture ecosystem.

Press release:

Khwarizmi Ventures is thrilled to announce the successful partial exit from its portfolio company,  Bosta, marking another important step forward for the firm, bringing the total to 6 successful  exits from Tamara, POSRocket, Fatura, Melltoo, Qawafel, and now Bosta. The firm has  distributed capital back to Fund I investors twice in less than 5 years since the launch date. 

Khwarizmi Ventures invested in Bosta three times, starting with its Series A round and later leading  one of the follow-on rounds, backing the founding team for their ambitious vision, customer-centric approach, and ability to execute in one of the region's most dynamic sectors. As Bosta  scaled from an emerging startup into a market leader, Khwarizmi Ventures completed a partial exit, realising about a 3x net multiple across its total position. This step reflects the value created  through Bosta’s growth and the strength of the partnership built from the company’s earliest stage.

"We're incredibly proud of Bosta team and grateful to be part of their journey. This  achievement reflects the founders' vision, relentless execution, and the strength of  innovation emerging from the MENA startup ecosystem. We look forward to the  company's next chapter of growth. 

— Abdulaziz AlTurki, Managing Partner at Khwarizmi Ventures 

Since its founding in 2017, Bosta has transformed logistics and last-mile delivery by providing  businesses with reliable, technology-driven shipping solutions. Through continuous innovation  and strong execution, the company has expanded its reach, strengthened its market position, and  delivered meaningful value to merchants and consumers. 

"Bosta was founded to solve one of the biggest challenges facing e-commerce in our region:  reliable, scalable last-mile delivery. Over the years, we’ve evolved into a platform that  supports thousands of businesses and enables commerce across multiple markets. This  outcome reflects how far Bosta has come and the strength of the team behind it. We’re excited  to build on this foundation and continue expanding Bosta’s impact across the region." 

— Mohamed Ezzat, Founder & CEO at Bosta 

This achievement reinforces Khwarizmi Ventures' commitment to partnering with exceptional  founders to build category-defining technology companies across the region. We congratulate the  entire Bosta team, including its employees, customers, investors, and partners, on their success  and wish them continued success in the years ahead. 

Press release:

Naran, a UAE-based mobility financing and fleet infrastructure platform, raised $10 million in equity and debt financing from Landel, a UAE-based investment firm. The funds will support mobility fleet scaling in Colombia, Peru, Senegal, and Côte d'Ivoire, as well as the company's entry into new markets, including MENA, and the rollout of new fintech products. 

Founded in 2025 by Bayaskhalan Alexeev and Alexander Gubarev – both alumni of Yango, where they launched and scaled ride-hailing operations across Latin America and Africa – Naran provides rent-to-own financing for cars and motorcycles, enabling independent drivers to access vehicles through flexible terms ranging from 12 to 60 months. The company buys vehicles directly from manufacturers and partners with major ride-hailing and delivery platforms, including Yango and inDrive, to put underbanked drivers on the road. 

Naran has built its own fleet management system that runs the company's entire operation seamlessly across all its markets — from driver onboarding and payment scheduling to utilisation tracking, telematics, and maintenance. By operating on a single technology platform and a consistent operating model, the company can scale efficiently across geographies. 

The vehicle is only the first product: each contract builds a driver's first formal repayment history — the foundation for Naran's broader ambition to become the asset-backed financing platform for emerging markets, where every product, from vehicles to future credit offerings, is secured by real assets and real repayment data. This infrastructure is designed to serve more than Naran's own vehicles. The company plans to open its technology stack to third-party fleet operators across its markets, offering fleet management software and internal automation tools as a SaaS product, providing asset-backed debt financing for fleet expansion, and, where the economics justify it, acquiring operators outright. Under this multi-fleet model, every fleet operator in Naran's markets becomes a potential customer rather than a competitor.

"We address a critical financing gap in emerging markets, where ride-hailing and delivery drivers can't access traditional bank loans due to irregular income or limited credit histories. Our goal is to make vehicle ownership accessible to mobility entrepreneurs, helping them increase their income and build financial security. At the same time, we solve the biggest constraint for ride-hailing and delivery platforms in these markets: supply. Every vehicle we finance is an active driver added to our partners' marketplaces," said Bayaskhalan Alexeev, CEO and co-founder of Naran. 

For platforms, Naran functions as a supply engine: every financed vehicle arrives with a vetted, onboarded driver, and fleet utilisation data is shared with partners to maximise hours on the road. The company is open to supply partnerships with ride-hailing and delivery platforms entering or scaling in Latin America, Africa, and MENA. 

In sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 88% of employment is informal, limiting access to vehicle financing and employment. In cities such as Abidjan, mobility constraints are estimated to reduce national income by 4-5%. Yet the demand is already there: Côte d'Ivoire ranks among the African countries with the highest ride-hailing usage on the continent. Ride-hailing is also one of the most attractive jobs available: according to Oliver Wyman, drivers in Africa earn up to 130% more than workers in comparable-skill jobs. The continent's shared mobility market is expected to nearly double by 2030 to approximately $8 billion, creating more than 550,000 additional income opportunities – the fastest growth of any region in the world. 

"Naran is a rare combination in emerging markets: an asset-backed business where every dollar deployed is secured by a revenue-generating, GPS-tracked vehicle, run by a team with deep operational experience in these exact markets. The model generates hard collateral, daily cash flows, and proven unit economics – and the fleet management infrastructure behind it makes the model scalable well beyond the company's own fleet. We look forward to supporting Naran's next phase of growth across Latin America and Africa," said Aidar Musin, Managing Partner at Landel.

By 2030, Naran aims to operate across 10 countries, create 30,000 income opportunities, and deploy fleets of 10,000 cars and 20,000 motorcycles. The company's expansion creates opportunities for UAE-based innovation and cross-border business growth, bringing global market activity and revenue streams to the UAE ecosystem.