Happy Friday friends 👋

It's finally happening. MNT-Halan has announced plans to list its Egyptian business on the EGX this month, offering 20% of existing shares and potentially rising to 25%. As we've previously reported, the Türkiye, Pakistan and UAE operations will all remain outside the listed entity.

It's been quite the circuitous journey for the company that began life in 2017 hailing tuk-tuks, before Mounir Nakhla and Ahmed Mohsen pivoted the whole thing into the lending, payments and wallets ecosystem that's carried it into rarefied unicorn territory. We'd highly recommend our exclusive sit-down with Mounir last year, tracing that winding journey to date and what the future may hold. You can read it here.

On the diaspora front, Amjad Masad's Replit has acquired Atta, the Menlo Ventures-backed AI analytics startup co-founded by Egyptian Omar Shaik and Tunisian Amine Ben Khalifa. Shaik cold emailed Masad two years ago asking him to invest, Masad and Michele Catasta wrote a cheque the same day after seeing an early demo, and both founders now join the $9 billion company. Neat and tidy.

Staying stateside, Shorooq and G42's Presight continue putting their joint $100 million AI fund to work, this time joining Maven Robotics' $100 million Series A through the Presight-Shorooq and Bedaya funds, backing the California warehouse robotics startup founded by Lebanese brothers Hamza and Khalid Derbas, whose wheeled, dual-armed machines are already running 16-hour days at customer sites.

Elsewhere, erad has raised a $22 million Series A led by MEVP as its Shariah-compliant SME financing crosses $133 million, Temasek is planning Riyadh and Abu Dhabi offices for 2027, and our latest deep dive digs into the UAE's open finance rails and agentic payments.

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This and much (much) more below 👇

This week’s round-up is a 7 min read:

erad (🇸🇦 KSA), a platform providing Shariah-compliant working capital to SMEs, has raised a $22M Series A led by MEVP, with participation from 500 Global, SVC, ANB Capital, Khwarizmi Ventures and Nuwa Capital. It’s deployed more than $133M across Saudi and the UAE, and will add products aimed at industrial, logistics and manufacturing businesses.

Amaani (🇦🇪 UAE), the company behind skincare and haircare brand AÏZA, has raised a $5M Series A led by BECO Capital, with participation from Homegrown Ventures and Peak XV's Surge, taking total funding to $8M. Founded by former Sequoia Capital India investor Shubham Poddar, it reports its first-half net revenue is up more than ninefold YoY, with Saudi retail launches followed by Kuwait and Qatar.

Aligator (🇶🇦 Qatar), a startup building AI agents for public relations, has raised a $1.2M Seed round led by Qatar Development Bank and Media City Qatar's Next Ventures, alongside private investors. Its agents draft and distribute press materials, find relevant journalists and track coverage, and the round will fund product development and regional expansion.

Gathern (🇸🇦 KSA), a platform connecting travellers with privately hosted apartments, villas and chalets, has secured an undisclosed follow-on investment from Pinnacle Capital's Growth & Secondary Fund. Pinnacle also backed the $72M Series B in August 2025 led by Sanabil, which valued the company above $267M.

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🇸🇦🇪🇬 MNT-Halan has announced plans to list its Egyptian business on the EGX this month, offering 20% of existing shares, potentially rising to 25%. Founded in 2018 by Mounir Nakhla and Ahmed Mohsen, the group spans lending, payments, wallets, savings and investments. This listing covers Egypt, while its businesses in Türkiye, Pakistan and the UAE remain outside the listed company.

Along the way, the wider group has attracted venture backing from MEVP, Algebra Ventures, DisrupTech Ventures and Endeavor Catalyst, alongside institutional investors including Apis Partners, DPI and IFC.

📱 Saudi wallet barq has received preliminary SAMA approval to add financing services, with plans to develop Shariah-compliant products. It says it’s the first digital wallet in the Kingdom to receive this initial approval. The move follows its $329.5M Series A at a $1.85B valuation, announced at Money20/20 earlier in September, and would broaden its business beyond payments into lending. Financing products still require final regulatory approvals before they can launch.

💵 UAE-based AI-native expense management platform Alaan, has joined the launch of Open USD. The fintech which raised a $48M Series A led by Peak XV last year, is among more than 200 launch partners for the dollar stablecoin, alongside Visa, American Express, Google and Stripe. OUSD went live on Wednesday and is issued by Stripe-owned Bridge, with governance handled by Open Standard, an independent company founded by Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa. Partners can mint and redeem without fees and earn rewards linked to the supply and activity they bring.

🇸🇬 Temasek is planning offices in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, expected to open in the first half of 2027, subject to approvals. The Singapore investor, which reported a US$401B portfolio at the end of March, also wants to deepen its relationships in Qatar. Some portfolio companies plan to share the new offices, giving the expansion a practical role in helping businesses enter the region as well as finding investments. The additions will take Temasek’s network to 15 offices across 11 countries.

🇯🇴 Uber has committed $50M to Jordan’s mobility sector over the next three years. Announced on September 29, the investment will support expansion beyond major cities, help taxi drivers access digital services and create more earning opportunities for drivers. Tourism is another focus, with Uber looking to improve connections between airports, hotels, restaurants and attractions across the country. The commitment follows meetings between Uber’s leadership and Jordanian government officials, with the investment ministry welcoming the expansion.

🦾 Shorooq and G42 company Presight have joined Maven Robotics’ $100M Series A, investing through the Presight–Shorooq AI and Bedaya funds alongside RoboStrategy, LocalGlobe, Vine Ventures and XTX Ventures. Founded in 2024 by Lebanese brothers Hamza and Khalid Derbas, the California startup builds wheeled, dual-armed robots for warehouse and manufacturing work, starting with stacking mixed loads onto pallets and moving storage containers. Maven says its machines already operate for up to 16 hours a day at customer sites. It plans to build 250 third-generation robots while developing its next model.

🇹🇳 Replit has acquired Atta, the AI analytics startup co-founded by Tunisian entrepreneur Amine Ben Khalifa and Omar Shaik, with both founders joining the company. Atta lets users explore business data and generate interactive charts through conversation, without writing SQL. Its charting technology was available in Replit chat as soon as the deal was announced last Friday. Ben Khalifa, Atta’s chief AI scientist, previously worked at Apple and Adobe. The acquisition adds a Tunisian founder’s business to Jordanian founder Amjad Masad’s Replit, which raised $400M at a $9B valuation in March, with QIA among the backers. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

🇦🇪 Together AI will establish a presence in Abu Dhabi through a partnership with Mubadala. The San Francisco company supplies the computing infrastructure and software developers use to train, adapt and run open AI models. The partners will explore infrastructure and investment opportunities in the UAE, bringing Together AI’s research and inference capabilities closer to regional customers. Mubadala invested $100M in its Series C earlier this year; this week’s announcement builds on that July investment.

🇸🇦 HUMAIN, Saudi’s flagship AI company is outsourcing the development of its outsourcing business to EY MENA. HUMAIN will supply the infrastructure and AI-agent technology, while EY will help develop and commercialise the offering, drawing on its work across finance, audit, tax and advisory. The service will build on HUMAIN ONE, its enterprise AI platform, with the aim of combining automated processes and human expertise to run business operations. It’s a development agreement at this stage.

If you’re raising a seed round in MENA, this is the best podcast episode you’ll find on how to actually do it. MilkStraw AI’s Jawad Shreim raised $2M in around 45 days. Orbii’s Nauman Ali set out to raise $2M and ended up with $3.6M.

Watch / listen