Happy Friday, friends 👋

Before we get into this week's edition proper, a quick ask:

We're shoring up our deep dive, long-form content calendar for the next couple of months and we're exceedingly keen to hear from you. Are there any particular areas or topics you'd like us to write about? Any stories slipping under the radar that deserve more attention? Just reply to this email. And if there's a story you feel you're best placed to tell yourself, let us know that too. We may be very happy for you to do just that and publish and amplify it via the publication.

We're starting with an announcement that broke yesterday regarding friend of FWDstart Arya Bolurfrushan's Applied AI, announcing a pre-Series B led by Mubadala's MENA Venture Fund and Arbor Ventures. This comes less than 12 months after the company's oversubscribed $55M Series A at a reported $300M valuation. The company was on track for $20M in revenue in 2025, according to MEVP's recently published annual letter. We recently had Arya on the FWDstart podcast, and you can check out that episode here.

Elsewhere, some interesting diversity in deal flow this week. Saudi's Grove raised $5M in seed funding for its vertically integrated D2C fresh produce ambitions (we have thoughts). Voice AI infrastructure is getting even more crowded with Breeze AI raising $1.3M in pre-seed to compete in the enterprise-grade space.

And tons to unpack in AI this week, particularly from Davos. Sam Altman is again eyeing Abu Dhabi funds for OpenAI's reported $50B raise, Cerebras is reducing its reliance on G42 for revenue by inking a deal with OpenAI, and G42 has been pitching foreign governments on digital embassies (a concept we've written about in great depth here). Meanwhile, QIA's CEO tells Bloomberg they're pumping the brakes on AI hype and taking a more selective approach moving forward, though to what extent remains to be seen.

This and much more below 👇

This week’s round-up is a 5 min read:

Applied AI (🇦🇪 UAE), an AI-native workflow platform for regulated industries, has raised an undisclosed pre-Series B round led by Mubadala’s MENA Venture Capital Fund and Arbor Ventures, to accelerate the global expansion of its Opus platform.

NowPay (🇪🇬 Egypt), a financial wellness platform offering salary advances and payroll services, has raised $20M in funding through a strategic partnership with United International Holding Company (Tas’heel), to scale its platform and launch operations in Saudi Arabia via a new joint venture, NowAccess.

Eat App (🇦🇪 UAE), a restaurant reservation and table management platform, has raised a $10M Series B extension led by PSG Equity via its portfolio company Zenchef SAS, to accelerate its growth and sharpen its focus on the Indian market.

Open (🇯🇴 Jordan), an AI-native customer support and communications platform, has raised a $7M Seed round co-led by Y Combinator and X by Unifonic with participation from Shorooq Partners and Sadu Capital, to scale its solution across Europe, the GCC, and the US.

Grove (🇸🇦 KSA), an agritech startup building a vertically integrated fresh-produce supply chain, has raised $5M in Seed funding led by Outliers VC with participation from angel investors, to scale operations, expand its network of partner farms and grow its consumer footprint.

Breez AI (🇯🇴 Jordan), a provider of enterprise-grade voice AI infrastructure, has raised $1.3M in Pre-Seed funding led by Wamda Capital and anchored by FENA Holdings and DASH Ventures with participation from angel investors, to accelerate product development and support expansion across North America and the GCC.

GBT (🇸🇦 KSA), a geospatial data and smart city technology company, has raised $1.3M in Pre-Seed funding led by Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al-Zamil & Sons Investment Company with participation from angel investors, to strengthen its infrastructure and launch a new generation of GeoAI products.

KNOT Technologies (🇪🇬 Egypt), an AI-native ticketing and access control platform, has raised $1M in Pre-Seed funding led by A15, to support product development, international expansion and deeper integrations across the live events ecosystem.

🤖 OpenAI is reportedly raising $50 billion+ at a $750-830 billion valuation, with CEO Sam Altman recently visiting Abu Dhabi to pitch state-backed funds including those he's worked with before (MGX previously invested, and OpenAI partnered with G42 on a UAE data centre). The company has also held talks with Amazon about a $10 billion investment. OpenAI remains unprofitable but has committed over $1.4 trillion to AI infrastructure spending in the coming years, joining fellow AI labs like Anthropic and xAI in tapping Middle East capital to fund their growing compute needs.

🔌 Cerebras is reportedly raising $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation (up from $8.1 billion just months ago) ahead of a planned Q2 2026 IPO, buoyed by a $10 billion deal with OpenAI to supply 750MW of computing power through 2028. The OpenAI partnership marks a major shift for Cerebras, which previously relied on G42 for a staggering 87% of its revenue in early 2024 – the Abu Dhabi AI firm is no longer the chipmaker's sole whale customer, though it remains strategically involved through Core42, which will offer OpenAI's open-source models on Cerebras hardware.

🏛️ G42 is pitching foreign governments on "digital embassies" – data centres that store information beyond a country's physical borders but under its own laws – as a hedge against natural disasters, cybercrime, and high energy costs in land-scarce nations. The concept mirrors Saudi Arabia's draft legislation (not yet enacted) that would allow guest countries to retain full autonomy or operate under hybrid legal systems with Saudi court assistance. While Estonia and Monaco have already established digital embassies in Luxembourg, the model hasn't been widely adopted—though that may change as Middle East AI giants position themselves as compute havens. (FWDstart has previously published an in-depth analysis exploring how data embassies fit into Saudi's broader compute sovereignty strategy and its race to become a "compute OPEC.")

🏗️ Saudi Arabia's National Infrastructure Fund is providing up to $1.2 billion in financing to HUMAIN, the Kingdom's PIF-owned AI company, to build 250MW of data centre capacity. The deal was announced in Davos. HUMAIN is targeting 6GW of capacity by 2034 and has already secured partnerships with Elon Musk's xAI and Blackstone-backed AirTrunk for data centre projects.

💰 Qatar Investment Authority is pumping the brakes on AI hype, with CEO Mohammed Al-Sowaidi telling Bloomberg the $580 billion sovereign fund will take a "more selective approach" to AI and digital infrastructure investments, cautioning about "short-term heat" in the sector. QIA will only back companies after assessing revenue generation, implementation capability, and productivity gains over five to six years – a notably patient timeline in an industry obsessed with quarterly wins – with a focus on financial services and industrials where AI-driven gains are already visible. The cautious stance comes despite QIA's existing AI exposure (including stakes in Elon Musk's xAI and a $20 billion Brookfield JV for AI infrastructure) and follows some high-profile stumbles in its tech portfolio, including UK-based Builder.ai, which recently filed for bankruptcy after raising $450M.

🚗 Abu Dhabi has transferred CYVN Holdings' assets, including luxury carmaker McLaren Automotive and an 18% stake in Chinese EV maker Nio – to L'imad Holding Company, the emirate's newest sovereign wealth fund chaired by Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The move consolidates government investments under one roof and strengthens L'imad's balance sheet as the fund builds out its portfolio across infrastructure, advanced technologies, and urban mobility (McLaren confirmed L'imad is now its ultimate owner, though CYVN remains the immediate parent).

Alina Truhina, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Utopia Capital Management, joins the podcast to discuss why copying and pasting Western VC models to the Global South is a recipe for failure, the "Problem-Oriented Deep Dives" (PODs) framework she uses to identify category-defining opportunities, why climate adaptation is the overlooked half of the climate crisis, and her contrarian view that the standard "2 and 20" VC fee structure is fundamentally broken for emerging markets.

For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

🧬 CE-Ventures, the VC arm of UAE-based Crescent Enterprises, joined the $55 million oversubscribed Series A for Think Bioscience, a US biotech developing synthetic biology platforms to design small-molecule therapies for disease targets previously considered "undruggable." The round was led by Regeneron Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, and Janus Henderson Investors.

💊 Mubadala has led a $36.5 million investment in LA-based L-Nutra's Series D (bringing the total round to $83.5 million), backing the nutrition tech company's push to turn "nutrition as medicine" from concept into clinical reality. L-Nutra, which has conducted 47 clinical trials and holds 137 patents around longevity nutrition and therapeutic interventions, will use the capital to launch a joint operation with Mubadala in Abu Dhabi producing medical nutrition therapies for MENA populations.