Happy Friday, friends 👋

If, like many, your portfolio tilts SaaS and your screen has been an unrelenting shade of red this week (thanks, Citrini Research, and thanks to Claude's apparently inexhaustible release schedule for reminding every CIO that half their software stack might be surplus to requirements), consider this your Friday respite.

First up, Peak XV (Sequoia Capital India & SEA) has raised $1.3 billion in its first post-Sequoia fundraise, and while most of the coverage fixated on the partner drama (a $200 million profit-sharing dispute will do that), we wanted to dedicate some time to its MENA strategy, as MD GV Ravishankar has assembled a regional portfolio from Dubai that now includes board seats at Tabby, Huspy, and Lean Technologies, amongst a number of other investments in 2025, most notably fintech Alaan. Full piece here.

Shorooq and Presight's global AI Fund revealed its opening hand, disclosing five investments from its $100M pot after claiming to have screened over 1,000 companies in 120 days. Brookfield folded Wa'ed-backed Ori Industries into a new AI infrastructure company called Radiant, part of a fund seeking $10 billion with Nvidia as a backer. And DoorDash is pulling the plug on Qatar (among others), a market where Deliveroo never quite cracked the Talabat-Snoonu duopoly and then Meituan's Keeta stormed in to finally force Tony Xu into throwing in the towel.

Elsewhere, Bosta is lining up what would be Egypt's first tech logistics IPO, G42 is now accepting job applications from AI agents (yes, really), and we have five fresh funding rounds to walk you through.

This and much more below 👇

This week’s round-up is a 5 min read:

🎓 Riyadh Valley Company, the investment arm of King Saud University, is anchoring SparkLabs KSU Fund I, a $20 million vehicle backing early-stage startups from Saudi founders and global founders expanding to the kingdom. SparkLabs, co-founded in 2012 by Bernard Moon, has invested in 500+ startups across 6 continents through vehicles spanning Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and global seed/Series A funds. SparkLabs entered Saudi in 2023 through a partnership with MCIT and NTDP, and will invest up to $300,000 per company through a four-month accelerator starting April 2026.

🇮🇳 Peak XV Partners has raised $1.3 billion across new India and Asia-focused funds, the firm's first independent fundraise since splitting from Sequoia Capital in 2023 – though not without drama, with senior partner Ashish Agrawal departing mid-fundraise amid a reported $200 million profit-sharing dispute over his 52x Groww return. MD GV Ravishankar, based in Dubai, has quietly assembled a MENA portfolio, including board seats at Tabby, Huspy, and Lean Technologies. Peak XV led Alaan's $48 million Series A last August. Full story here.

💼 Egypt's Beltone Holding launched a Private Equity platform to provide growth-stage capital alongside its existing Beltone Venture Capital arm. Beltone VC, which launched in 2023 and now manages ~$55 million in AUM across 21 portfolio companies, has been one of the region's more active investors, most recently backing Moroccan proptech Yakeey's $15 million Series A in January. Ali Mokhtar, CEO and MP of Beltone VC, will lead the new PE platform, which expects to complete 4-5 investments in its first 12-18 months targeting the "growth-stage valley of death."

💰 Saudi-Egyptian VC firm EDAFA is targeting $10 million in Egyptian startup investments in 2026, a 25%+ increase from last year's deployment, as CEO Essam Aly Mostafa continues executing on a $30 million three-year plan announced in late 2024. The Al Khobar-HQ’d firm, which positions itself as a cross-border "Venture Bridge" between Egypt and the Gulf, has invested ~$8 million across 20+ Egyptian startups over the past 18 months.

🤖 The Presight-Shorooq Fund I has disclosed its first five investments after screening over 1,000 companies in its first 120 days: NodeShift (Abu Dhabi sovereign AI cloud), Candid (construction bidding automation), Hebbia (enterprise AI for finance/law at a $700M valuation), Blue (YC-backed voice-first mobile agents), and Crunched (AI Excel agent for consulting and PE). The $100 million global AI fund is a joint venture between G42's ADX-listed Presight and Shorooq, led by partner Dr. Bilal Baloch with a target of 25-30 AI-first startups and 40% reserved for follow-ons.

🏗️ Brookfield has acquired UK-based Ori Industries and merged it into Radiant, a new AI infrastructure company that will build "AI factories" using Nvidia's DSX reference design. Saudi Aramco's Wa'ed Ventures, which made a strategic investment in Ori in February 2025 (including plans for a Riyadh subsidiary to power MENA AI workloads), is expected to retain a stake in the combined entity. Radiant is the first compute deployment from Brookfield's AI Infrastructure Fund, which is seeking $10 billion in commitments with Nvidia as a backer. The Middle East features prominently – Brookfield is building a data center campus in Qatar with QIA subsidiary QAI and will lease Radiant capacity from that facility.

🍔 DoorDash is shutting down operations in Qatar, Japan, Singapore, and Uzbekistan as the US delivery giant retreats from markets where it can't build long-term scale. The Qatar exit is telling – Deliveroo, which DoorDash acquired last year, entered in 2022 but struggled against entrenched incumbents Talabat and homegrown Snoonu (now Jahez-owned and expanding to Kuwait and Bahrain). The competitive picture only got tougher when Meituan's Keeta launched in Doha in August 2025 with its signature subsidy blitz, part of an aggressive Gulf push now covering Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain. Deliveroo's Qatar platform will cease operations March 4. DoorDash said the exits will have no material impact on financial guidance.

🔒 G42 has unveiled its plan to protect imported US AI chips from outside interference, a prerequisite for the UAE to receive up to 500,000 Nvidia semiconductors annually through 2027. The Abu Dhabi tech group will deploy a "Common Operating Picture" platform providing continuous visibility into chip location, access, and end-use, alongside a Regulated Technology Environment with personnel screening, access controls, and continuous monitoring. US undersecretary of state Jacob Helberg called the safeguards "incredibly positive," saying they set a standard for broader adoption across Pax Silica, the US-led coalition securing AI supply chains.

🤖 In other news, G42 is now also accepting job applications from AI agents. The Abu Dhabi tech group announced it has begun recruiting AI agents into enterprise roles, with candidates required to demonstrate enterprise reliability, governance alignment, and measurable performance. Successful applicants will enter a probationary phase before scaled deployment, with human leadership retaining final accountability. The framework includes structured performance reviews and a value-linked compensation model for agent developers.

📦 Egyptian delivery startup Bosta is preparing to list on the Egyptian Exchange, targeting a 20-30% float valued at ~EGP 8 billion ($160-170 million) by end of 2026—what would be the first tech-enabled logistics IPO on the EGX. The company is concurrently raising $32 million (with $27 million closed from investors including Fawry), and has scaled from 300,000 parcels monthly to 37 million in 2025, targeting 80 million in 2026. Recent moves include a $5 million automated sorting center and a partnership with state-owned bus operator SuperJet to build a national same-day shipping network. EFG Hermes is advising amid an EGX revival – officials expect 2026 to be the exchange's most active IPO period ever.