Happy Friday friends 👋

Two scoops to kick things off a bumper week. New accounts show Etisalat valued its remaining Careem stake at less than half the level implied by Uber’s July deal, alongside further losses at the Everything App. And VC-backed proptech Silkhaus is winding down its UAE short-term rental business, FWDstart can exclusively reveal.

To say it’s been a busy week on the fund front would be an understatement. BY Venture Partners has closed its third fund at $60 million anchored by DFDF, DPI has reached a final close above $112 million on Cairo fintech fund Nclude, and Mubadala Capital’s long-time venture chief Ibrahim Ajami is leaving to launch Noha, a new firm targeting $500 million with substantial backing expected from his former employer.

Elsewhere, Saudi has overtaken the UAE to become Delivery Hero’s largest MENA market by orders, Lebanese-raised Tarek Mansour’s Kalshi has raised $1 billion at a $40 billion valuation, and COTU-backed Pakistani fintech AdalFi is planning an IPO for next month.

And a small celebration of our own, as FWDstart turns three this week. To mark the occasion, we’re offering 50% off your first year of premium until midnight tonight, the cheapest it will ever be. Claim it here before it disappears.

This and much (much) more below 👇

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ALPHA10X (🇦🇪 UAE), an AI platform for investment research, has raised $5M in a pre-Series A led by Doha's Growth X Capital. It is setting up in Qatar to build relationships with sovereign funds and institutional investors there.

NoorNation (🇪🇬 Egypt), which builds decentralised solar and water infrastructure, has raised $1.05M in a seed from Linah Farms, Catalyst Fund and KBW Ventures to expand its pay-per-use solar irrigation offering.

Turuq (🇪🇬 Egypt), an ecommerce fulfilment company handling warehousing, inventory, packing and delivery, has taken an undisclosed seed from Den VC, its first outside investment, as it eyes Saudi entry by licensing its warehouse software.

New accounts reveal a substantial gap between the price Uber paid to take control and the value assigned to etisalat’s remaining stake, alongside further losses at the Everything App.

🤖 Ibrahim Ajami is leaving Mubadala Capital after more than a decade running its ventures arm to launch Noha, a new firm targeting $500M, according to the FT. Around 90% of the capital would go into US startups, with Mubadala Capital expected to provide substantial backing, leaving Ajami running an independent shop while keeping financial ties to the sovereign platform he is leaving. He co-led Crusoe’s $3.9B Series F for Mubadala last month, having backed the company since 2022.

🇦🇪 BY Venture Partners has closed its third fund at $60M to back early-stage AI-native startups, with Dubai Future District Fund anchoring alongside MultiLane, Transmed Capital and Saudi Arabia’s Idriss Family Office. That follows a $46M debut and a $50M second fund backed by Mubadala, Bahrain’s Al Waha and Tamar Capital, taking reported AUM past $200M including co-investment vehicles. Fund III writes cheques of up to $1M from pre-seed to Series A and has made 15 investments towards a planned 40, including PQShield, Isometric, Huspy and Invisible.

🇪🇬 DPI has reached a final close above $112M on Nclude, the Cairo fintech fund it took over from Global Ventures in April last year. The fund launched in March 2022 at $85M with Banque Misr as anchor and the National Bank of Egypt and Banque du Caire among its backers, and had reached $105M by its second close, meaning the final close adds roughly $7M of new money. DPI has since brought in more LPs and widened the mandate, writing $500K to $10M cheques from seed through Series C, up from seed to Series B at launch, with up to 30% available for deals outside Egypt. The portfolio includes Paymob, Nawy, FlapKap and Money Fellows.

🇴🇲 Oman’s Phaze Ventures has launched two funds targeting more than $75M combined, splitting its strategy between a global AI and deeptech Fund II and a domestic Oman vehicle. The Muscat-based manager has secured more than $40M in commitments so far, with backing from ITHCA, Ominvest, Oman LNG Development Foundation and Future Fund Oman. The domestic fund gives Oman a dedicated local pool at a point when most Gulf venture dollars remain concentrated in Saudi, the UAE and Qatar.

🤝 Apollo has agreed to take a minority stake in Mubadala Capital, with Apollo and other incoming shareholders expected to commit a combined $5B to the firm’s investment strategies. The $5B covers investment commitments rather than the price paid for the management-company stake, which was not disclosed. It lands alongside Ajami’s departure, giving Mubadala Capital an outside shareholder and a large pool of committed capital as its venture leadership changes hands.

🇪🇬 Tanmiya Capital has closed its second fund at $130M, beating a $120M target on the back of a $37.5M commitment from the EIB alongside the IFC, EBRD, EAEF and MSMEDA. The Egyptian manager invests in established businesses across healthcare, fintech and logistics, making this growth capital rather than startup funding. The development-finance-heavy LP base is becoming the pattern for Egyptian funds raising through a weak pound.

The HungerStation market reached the milestone as regional transaction growth accelerated to 20.6%, with MENA accounting for almost a third of the group’s global GMV.

🇵🇰 AdalFi plans to raise up to $2.35M through a Karachi IPO next month to expand its Islamic lending and small-business services, which the company says would make it the first fintech listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange. The Lahore company, backed by COTU Ventures and Chimera Ventures, will issue new shares, with no valuation, offer price or stake size disclosed and no sale by existing shareholders announced. AdalFi helps banks underwrite borrowers from their own transaction data, with the banks supplying capital and holding the loans while AdalFi takes a share of income and part of the credit risk.

🇵🇰 Abhi Microfinance Bank has set terms for its Karachi listing, selling 132 million shares from a PKR 15 floor to raise up to $11M, with institutions bidding on 5-6 November and retail the week after. The money is going to shore up the balance sheet as much as to fund lending, with the bank currently holding less capital than Pakistan’s regulator requires and not expecting to clear that bar until the end of 2027. We went through the financials and forecasts with founder Omair Ansari in September, in a deep dive on the gold book that drives four-fifths of Abhi’s lending.

🎯 Kalshi has raised $1B at a $40B valuation, co-led by Sequoia and Wellington, nearly doubling the $22B mark set in May, with a16z, CapitalG and Morgan Stanley Investment Management joining. Co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour grew up in Lebanon before studying at MIT, where he met co-founder Luana Lopes Lara. The company says non-sports annualised revenue has passed $1B and is pushing into commodities, crypto and perpetual futures, moving beyond prediction markets towards a broader exchange. Its sports contracts remain contested, with state regulators and tribal operators still arguing they amount to unlicensed betting.

Startup exits, founder selection and why Shorooq's Shane Shin thinks the follow-on cheque matters more.