“You’re gonna need a bigger data centre,” was the immediate JAWS-inspired quip that sprang to mind on reading Semafor’s report that Saudi’s AI champion HUMAIN has already sold out of capacity at both its existing and planned data centres.

Only 1% of its compute customers are actually inside the Kingdom, with the rest overseas – a striking statistic. History may not repeat, but the parallels with oil exports suggest it may very well rhyme, in iambic pentameter no less.

HUMAIN also released its HUMAIN Chat platform this week, powered by its sovereign Allam 34B model, the first Arabic-centric LLM built at scale for Saudi culture and values. For now, it’s restricted to use within Saudi, so we’ll have to wait with bated breath for our feedback once access extends across the wider Gulf and we can finally get our hands on it.

Impact46 continues to dominate startup funding headlines. This week they backed Saudi gaming studio Kammelna, makers of the wildly popular game Baloot, to the tune of $53M. In some quarters this has been reported as an acquisition, elsewhere as a significant investment. We’ve reached out to Impact46 for clarity on how they’d prefer it framed, but so far no response. If and when we do hear back, you’ll be the first to know.

Elsewhere, Impact46 also led a $22M Series A for UAE-founded proptech Holo, with Mubadala, Arab National Bank, and Salica Oryx Fund among the participants. The startup, which recently expanded into Saudi, will use the funding to scale its operations across the Kingdom.

Funding announcements were in no short supply this week, so we’ll point you to our startup funding roundup below to fill in the blanks.

Also worth keeping an eye on are the fundraising efforts of the global AI infrastructure players. Sifted had a great piece this week on Mistral’s reported $1B raise and its deepening Gulf ties, with potential backing from Mubadala, MGX, and PIF as it carries the weight of Europe’s AI sovereignty ambitions.

Meanwhile, no firm detail yet on Anthropic’s latest move, but reports suggest it’s doubling its fundraise from $5B to $10B, still an extraordinarily oversubscribed round, despite co-founder Dario Amodei’s well-publicised gripes about having “no choice” but to take capital from the region.

And finally: if you missed it, check out this week’s deep dive with Armineh Baghoomian, Managing Director and EMEA Head at PFG, as she reflects on deploying over $300M+ across MENA, the region’s evolving debt literacy, and why Tabby was an obvious bet.

Now, let’s get into this week’s edition 👇

This week’s round-up is a 5 min read:

Kammelna (🇸🇦 KSA), the Dammam-based gaming studio behind Baloot and Jackaroo, has been acquired in a $53M deal by Impact46, marking the VC firm’s largest investment to date. With over 6M downloads and 1M monthly active users, the acquisition will accelerate the studio’s growth and global reach in culturally inspired gaming.

Holo (🇦🇪 UAE), a proptech company digitising the mortgage journey, has raised a $22M Series A led by Impact46, with participation from Mubadala Investment Company, Rua Growth Fund, anb seed, MoreThan Capital, Salica Oryx Fund, and Dubai Future District Fund. The funding will fuel its Saudi and wider GCC expansion as it scales operations across the region.

Maalexi (🇦🇪 UAE), a B2B food and agriculture fintech founded in 2021, has secured a Shariah-compliant credit facility of up to $20M from Amwal Capital Partners, starting with an initial $5M tranche. The financing will support cross-border trade for agri-SMEs and help strengthen food security across the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Zetta Technologies (🇸🇦 KSA), a Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) platform simplifying IT access through subscription models, has closed a $12M Series A led by Core Vision Investment and National Dimensions Investment.

Cointel (🇦🇪 UAE), an AI-powered crypto education and intelligence platform, has raised $7.4M in a round led by Avalanche and Sugafam Inc.. Founded in 2025, the company integrates AI insights, gamified learning, and scam protection, with plans to expand into North America after early traction in Japan and Turkey.

Sheba Joy (🇸🇦 KSA), a Riyadh-based mobile gaming studio founded in 2021, has raised $293K (SAR 1.1M) in a pre-seed round led by Merak Capital. The funding will expand its team and production capacity, enabling the development of four new titles inspired by local culture.

Spoilz (🇸🇦 KSA), a mobile games studio developing culturally resonant titles, has secured an undisclosed investment from Merak Capital and Impact46. The funding will enhance its development and LiveOps capabilities as it positions itself as a global gaming contender.

Blomal Capital (🇸🇦 KSA), a fintech founded in 2022, has secured an undisclosed pre-seed round from Falak Investment Hub. The platform enables investors to digitally access both public and private investment funds, streamlining wealth management in the Kingdom.

🤖 HUMAIN has launched HUMAIN Chat, powered by its sovereign ALLaM 34B model, the first Arabic-centric LLM built at scale for Saudi culture and values. Trained by more than 120 specialists on one of the largest proprietary Arabic datasets, ALLaM 34B has been benchmarked near global parity and debuts with features like real-time web search, multi-dialect speech input, and bilingual switching. Initially limited to Saudi users, HUMAIN plans to expand access across the Middle East and eventually worldwide, positioning ALLaM as a foundation for Arabic AI as Gulf rivals like G42 and global players including OpenAI and Anthropic push their own multilingual models.

⚡ Following the launch of HUMAIN Chat, Semafor reports that HUMAIN has already sold out capacity at its existing and planned data centres. Strikingly, only 1% of its compute customers are inside the Kingdom, with the rest overseas. The firm runs what it calls the world’s largest inferencing hub with Groq and wants to scale from 1.9 GW of capacity by 2030 to 6 GW by 2034, though access to advanced US chips remains a hurdle despite Trump-era promises of looser export controls. As Bloomberg columnist Parmy Olson notes, a potential risk is Saudi ends up echoing China’s data centre boom, where vast computing power sits idle without enough homegrown talent or software to use it.

🇫🇷 French AI startup Mistral, often cast as Europe’s best shot at an AI champion, is deepening its Middle East ties as it eyes a reported $1B fundraise, according to Sifted. Gulf investors already on its cap table include Saudi’s Sanabil and UAE’s Damac, while talks are said to be ongoing with Abu Dhabi’s sovereign fund Mubadala, new AI vehicle MGX (backed by Mubadala and G42), and potentially Saudi’s PIF. The company has also partnered with G42 and MBZUAI on infrastructure and released Saba, a model trained on Arabic and South Asian datasets.

🌍 Tokyo-based Uncovered Fund, whose portfolio includes Piggyvest and Lemfi, has teamed up with Monex Group to launch the $20M Uncovered Monex Africa Investment Partnership, writing initial checks of $100K–$500K with follow-ons up to $2M. The fund, backed by Japanese financial institutions, trading houses, and corporates, will focus on fintech, mobility, retail, logistics, and climate tech, with Egypt as a key hub. CEO Takuma Terakubo says the strategy is to link African startups with Japanese corporates for partnerships and acquisitions, while also exploring debt financing and carbon credit trading opportunities.

💡 Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala invested $35M in UK-based Paragraf as part of its $55M round, backing the company’s push to scale graphene semiconductors and open subsidiaries in the Middle East, China, and the US. Paragraf’s graphene tech is being developed for applications from EVs and quantum computing to energy storage and cancer drug research.

🌐 Mubadala also joined Welcome Tech’s $7.5M round, supporting the US startup’s AI-driven platform that connects immigrant workers to jobs, healthcare, and financial services. The funding will expand its workforce engagement tools and multilingual service delivery.

🦋 SILQFi, the fintech arm of SILQ Group, created earlier this year through the merger of Saudi B2B marketplace Sary and Bangladesh’s ShopUp, which raised $110M at the time, has moved beyond its $20M pilot by partnering with Helix. The deal introduces tokenised, sharia-compliant invoice financing for SMEs, linking stablecoin liquidity with day-to-day business needs in the Gulf as SILQ Group builds an end-to-end commerce and finance platform across emerging markets.

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This week on VC React, we unpack Robinhood’s push into the GCC, ask whether global unicorns upend MENA’s copycat playbook or force founders to compete head-on, dissect Impact46’s gaming spree, probe Merak’s full-stack capital model, and debate whether Saudi developers should lead with local stories or go global first.