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Happy Friday friends 👋

LEAP finally drew to a close in Riyadh yesterday, after four days in which the volume of announcements comfortably outpaced anyone’s ability to keep track of them.

If this week’s funding round-up looks unusually Saudi-heavy, that’s of course no coincidence. More than a dozen Kingdom-based startups timed raises around the conference, alongside an avalanche of new funds, partnerships and AI announcements.

We’ve pulled together the AI announcements actually worth knowing, and it speaks volumes that HUMAIN comfortably sets a new record for mentions in a single FWDstart article. Those range from confirmation that its planned $10 billion global venture fund could launch even larger before year-end, to a separate Saudi-focused vehicle called HUMAIN Limitless.

Away from the conference floor, our analysis this week involved both ordering from Keeta for sustenance after crawling through Riyadh traffic and digging into the news that the Meituan outfit has recorded its first profitable month in Saudi, 22 months after launch, a full seven months faster than it reached the same point in Hong Kong. For everyone who has spent the past two years wondering how long Meituan would tolerate burning money in the Kingdom, the answer increasingly appears to be that it no longer thinks it needs to.

Elsewhere, COFE has closed a $43 million pre-IPO round at a $178 million valuation as the Kuwait-born coffee platform targets a Saudi listing by 2029. And Adam Neumann’s Flow has secured a DIFC licence, with its first UAE openings planned for early 2027, extending the Gulf push we examined in our deep dive on his Riyadh second act.

One diary note before we get into it. Next Wednesday, FWDstart is co-hosting an event for the first time, teaming up with Propeller and Antler for Demo Night Dubai at Dubai Founders HQ on September 9. We’d love to see you there!

This and much (much) more below 👇

This week’s round-up is a 10 min read:

Next Wednesday, FWDstart is co-hosting an event for the first time, teaming up with Propeller and Antler for Demo Night Dubai at Dubai Founders HQ.

If you’re building something interesting in the UAE, working on something technical, or simply want to meet more people who are, come along.

And if you’ve built something you think the room should see, apply to demo it.

📍 Dubai Founders HQ
📅 Wednesday, September 9
⏰ 5 – 8pm

👉 Register | 👉 Apply to demo

COFE (🇸🇦 KSA), the Kuwait-born coffee-ordering app now selling procurement and commerce software, has raised $43M in a pre-IPO round at a $178M valuation, led by Wa'ed Ventures, with participation from Aditum Investment Management, Masarrah Investment Company, and Alyasra Foods, ahead of a targeted Saudi listing by 2029.

FlyAkeed (🇸🇦 KSA), a corporate travel platform, has raised $25.15M combining equity and Murabaha sukuk, with the equity led by Sanabil Investments and the sukuk led by Artal Capital, alongside tali ventures and Aljazira Capital.

Enhance (🇦🇪 UAE), a fitness technology company whose software runs personal training operations for multi-site gym chains, has raised $18.2M in equity and venture debt, with equity from Global Ventures and debt from Stride Ventures.

Nayla (🇸🇦 KSA), a digital financing platform for micro-enterprises, has raised $18M, backed by Sanabil Studio, Idrisi Ventures, Suhail Ventures, and BLOMINVEST.

Syarah (🇸🇦 KSA), an online marketplace for new and used cars with nationwide delivery, has raised $12M from Impact46.

Sirdab (🇸🇦 KSA), a logistics platform giving businesses access to warehousing and transport capacity, has raised $10M in a Series A, co-led by Elm and BECO Capital, with existing backers Y Combinator, COTU Ventures, and D Global Ventures.

RABEH (🇸🇦 KSA), a fintech connecting entrepreneurs with investors through financing, tokenisation, and trading tools, has raised $8.5M from a group of angel investors.

Hazen.ai (🇸🇦 KSA), a deeptech AI traffic management company combining sensors and video processing for road-risk analysis, has raised $8M, led by Impact46.

ZenHR (🇸🇦 KSA), an HR platform covering payroll, compliance, performance and leave management across MENA, has raised $6M in a bridge round, led by Impact46.

Abwab.ai (🇸🇦 KSA), an AI credit infrastructure company automating SME loan origination and underwriting, has raised $4M in a Seed round, led by Speedinvest and MEVP.

3C Coding School (🇪🇬 Egypt), an edtech provider teaching coding, AI, data science and cybersecurity, has raised $3M in a Seed round, led by MRG Economic Group, with participation from investor Amr Saad and angel investors.

Arabic.AI (🇦🇪 UAE), Nour Al Hassan's Arabic translation and document intelligence business, has received an undisclosed strategic investment from HUMAIN, alongside a partnership to deploy Arabic-first AI products to Saudi enterprise customers.

Remedium (🇸🇦 KSA), a climatetech building carbon management and sustainability accounting software, has raised $1.5M in a Pre-Seed round, led by Kaltaire Investments, with angel participation.

Takahouse (🇸🇦 KSA), a mobile game developer behind social card title WhistGame, has raised $1.5M from Impact46.

Rwaj (🇸🇦 KSA), a live social shopping and auction marketplace, has raised $1.2M in a Pre-Seed round from undisclosed investors.

IDRAJ (🇸🇦 KSA), a legal tech company providing AI tools for companies preparing to list on Tadawul's main market or Nomu, has raised $598K in a pre-Seed round, led by ASAP LegalTech.

Churn Solution (🇵🇸 Palestine), a customer retention platform for subscription businesses, has raised an undisclosed Seed round from Ibtikar Fund.

Independent reporting, deep dives and analysis on the companies, investors and markets shaping technology across MENA.

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ANALYSIS

Keeta took 29 months to reach the same milestone in Hong Kong, where it launched in May 2023.

💰 HUMAIN says its planned $10B global AI venture fund could launch at an even larger size before year-end, with CEO Tareq Amin telling Semafor it "will be really large" and will have offices in Saudi, the US, France and the UK. The company is also creating HUMAIN Limitless, a separate vehicle focused on AI companies inside the Kingdom, with size and structure undisclosed. Amin ruled out passive investing, saying portfolio companies will be expected to run compute through Saudi data centres or bring staff into the country, the pattern already visible in the Luma AI Series C and the xAI investment. HUMAIN's $3B xAI stake converted into SpaceX shares after the acquisition, which Amin called “a home run.”

🌸 Blossom Accelerator has launched Blossom Capital, its investment arm, with an initial portfolio of nine early-stage AI companies. The deals came through DominAIte, its AI investment platform backed by the NTDP, and run in two directions: Saudi founders building for global markets, and internationblossal companies relocating into the Kingdom. Blossom, founded by Emon Shakoor, says it has facilitated more than $250M in funding to date.

🇰🇷 Ula Capital and South Korea's FuturePlay have launched a $100M deep-tech fund connecting investment opportunities between Saudi and Korea. Ula Capital launched in early 2025 as a data-driven deep-tech investor, HQ’d in Riyadh, regulated in Abu Dhabi and with offices in SV and South Korea, focused on climate, healthcare and AI. FuturePlay, founded in Seoul in 2012, runs both an accelerator and venture funds with more than 200 investments across AI, robotics and biotech, and signed an MoU with Saudi's Ministry of Investment last December to help Korean startups enter the Kingdom.

LEAP 2026

LEAP closed in Riyadh yesterday after four days dominated by Saudi Arabia’s AI buildout, with HUMAIN responsible for a fairly extraordinary share of the announcements.

💾 Rebellions, the South Korean AI chip startup backed by Aramco's Wa'ed Ventures is in early-stage talks with Nvidia over a technical partnership, investment or potential acquisition, Bloomberg reported. Rebellions builds neural processing units for AI inference, recently established a unit in the Kingdom, and has raised around $850M to date, most recently a $400M pre-IPO round in March at a $2.34B valuation. The talks follow a meeting between Jensen Huang and Rebellions CEO Sunghyun Park at Nvidia's Santa Clara headquarters, and come amid an acquisitive stretch for Nvidia that has taken in Hugging Face, MediaTek, Groq and Enfabrica in under a year. Any deal would face regulatory scrutiny in South Korea, where semiconductors are treated as critical assets.

📚 Jordanian edtech Abwaab has acquired Egypt's Eduact, its second deal this year after buying university admissions startup Apex Education in January. Eduact gives independent teachers and small learning centres software to manage video lessons, grading and payments, pushing Abwaab towards the tutoring centres that still deliver much of the region's education offline. Founded in 2019 by former Uber executive Hamdi Tabbaa, Abwaab operates in six MENA markets and has raised more than $30M. Terms were not disclosed.

🚕 Moroccan payments company Cash Plus is taking joint control of Tripass, the startup behind WeTaxi, a platform for prepaid airport-to-city taxi transfers booked through screens in arrival halls. WeTaxi gives drivers digital wallets, a financial inclusion angle that fits Cash Plus's core business. The Bank Al-Maghrib-licensed payment institution runs more than 3,000 agencies and listed on the Casablanca exchange this year.

💳 Alaan has received in-principle approval from the Central Bank of the UAE for Stored Value Facilities and Retail Payment Services licences, which would allow it to hold customer funds, issue corporate cards and run cross-border payments under its own regulatory permissions rather than relying entirely on partners such as NymCard and ruya. That is particularly relevant after Alaan paused Saudi operations this year when SAMA ordered card issuer Neoleap to suspend BIN sponsorship, disrupting Alaan, Pemo and Pluto’s ability to issue cards in the Kingdom. It joins a broader summer wave of CBUAE approvals that has included Revolut, Remitly, KamelPay, Pemo and Checkout.com.

💼 Impact46 and Hala have expanded their joint SME financing fund from $26.7M to $66.7M, a 150% increase in under two years, announced at LEAP. The vehicle channels credit to the small businesses on Hala's platform, which serves more than 142,000 merchants and processes over $8B in annual transactions through business accounts, POS systems and cards. The two have a long history with the firm having led Hala's $6.5M Series A in 2021 and subsequently returning for its $157M Series B last September, one of the largest fintech rounds in the region to date.

🏢 Adam Neumann's Flow has secured a DIFC commercial licence and plans to open its first UAE communities in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in Q1 2027, extending a Gulf push that began in Saudi two years ago. The a16z-backed residential operator is in advanced negotiations for its first properties, with a local team of 16 expected to reach 40 to 50 by year-end. Flow entered the Kingdom by acquiring five residential blocks and raising a $293M fund, and now says it has a $2.5B portfolio of 8,500 residences under management or development.

🏠 Nawy has raised another $13M to fund its mortgage lending arm, taking the total past $21M in under a year through a programme run with Synergy Capital that targets around $104M over five years. Nawy, founded in Cairo in 2019, processed more than $1.4B in property transactions in 2024 and raised a $52M Series A led by Partech last year. The first round of the programme closed at $9M last October and has returned about 12.9% in pounds so far this year with no missed payments, with every investor coming back for the second.