Happy Friday friends 👋

The response to our field notes from Money20/20 in Riyadh this week was overwhelmingly positive, so thanks to everyone who reached out! More of that format to come then.

If you missed it, you can catch up on our coverage of the mega-rounds, the growing Saudi-UAE fault lines, an alarming amount of AI-generated slop, and why Paul Graham’s 2002 essay on taste somehow feels more relevant by the week here.

Inevitably, the fintech money printer was working overtime, with startups holding announcements in reserve for the conference.

Tabby raised a $233 million Series F at a $6.5 billion valuation as it pushes beyond BNPL, up from the $4.5 billion mark set by a secondary sale last October. barq, meanwhile, raised a $329.5 million Series A, yes, Series A, at a $1.85 billion valuation.

There was plenty happening on the debt side too, with Lendo and SILQ’s embedded finance arm Fina launching a $133 million direct financing fund, its third capital raise in as many months.

Elsewhere, MNT-Halan cleared a key first step towards its Cairo listing, and Mubadala Capital has co-led Crusoe’s $3.9 billion Series F at a $30.9 billion valuation, having invested in every round since 2022.

As always, if you're enjoying our coverage, please support our ability to grow by becoming a premium subscriber for only $9.99 a month. Or if you'd prefer to bring the whole team along, check out our new group plans here.

This and much (much) more below 👇

This week’s round-up is a 5 min read:

​Scaling into a new MENA market is easy to announce. Actually building a team there is where things start to get complicated!

​Join Jamie Lane, FWDstart, and Kamal Reggad, CEO & Co-founder of RemotePass, for a practical conversation on what actually starts to break as companies scale across Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the wider region, and how operators can avoid creating a mess as they grow.

​Who’s it for?

​Founders, COOs, finance leaders, people/HR teams and operators building or expanding teams across MENA.

barq (🇸🇦 KSA), a SAMA-licensed digital payments and money transfer app, has raised $329.5M in a Series A at a $1.85B valuation, with participation from Noon Investments, Sohar International Bank, and M20 Fund.

Tabby (🇸🇦 KSA), the BNPL unicorn now expanding into consumer lending, SME finance and everyday money management, has raised $233M in a Series F at a $6.5B valuation, led by Blue Pool Capital, with participation from HSG, Wellington Management and Arbor Ventures.

Tarabut (🇧🇭 Bahrain), an open banking infrastructure company moving into embedded lending and credit decisioning, has raised $50M in strategic financing from Riyad Bank, SAB Invest's X-Tech Fund, GIB Saudi Arabia, Zamil Group, and Kanoo Ventures.

Rize (🇸🇦 KSA), a proptech letting tenants split annual rent into 12 monthly payments while landlords are paid upfront, has secured a $50M (SAR 187.5M) asset-backed Murabaha facility from Jadwa Investment to finance its rental contract portfolio.

Synapse Analytics (🇦🇪 UAE), an AI decisioning platform letting banks automate credit, fraud and AML decisions inside their own infrastructure, has raised $13M in a Series A, led by Partech, with participation from Algebra Ventures and Silicon Badia.

BRKZ (🇸🇦 KSA), a construction procurement platform connecting contractors with building materials suppliers, has raised $13M in a Series B, co-led by Wa'ed Ventures and 500 Global, with participation from BECO Capital and ANB Capital, alongside an $18M drawdown on its existing Stride Ventures debt facility.

OCTA (🇦🇪 UAE), a fintech automating receivables and payables for SMEs, now building AI agents for accounting firms, has raised $3.5M in a Seed round, led by MEVP, with participation from Wa'ed Ventures, Plug and Play, A-typical Ventures, Sukna Ventures and Sadu Capital.

Tanami (🇧🇭 Bahrain), a digital private markets platform giving eligible investors access to private equity, credit, real estate and infrastructure, has raised an undisclosed round, backed by tali ventures, Qatar Development Bank, and 1818 Ventures.

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

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💰 SAMA-regulated debt crowdfunding marketplace Lendo has secured a $200M institutional capital programme from Austria's Quantic Financial Solutions, announced at Money20/20 in Riyadh, to fund working capital lending to Saudi SMEs. Quantic, a Vienna asset manager in the C-Quadrat group, will also package the financed assets into Sharia-compliant products for international investors, opening a channel for foreign capital into Saudi SME lending rather than a one-off cheque. Lendo, founded in 2019 by Osama AlRaee and Mohammed Jawabri, was the second-largest private debt recipient in the GCC last year at $740M behind only Tamara, through a $690M warehouse facility led by J.P. Morgan and a $50M Murabaha facility from Jadwa Investment.

💵 SILQ has launched a SAR 500M ($133M) direct financing fund for Saudi SMEs, managed by Riyadh-based Joa Capital and licensed by the CMA. The vehicle sits under Fina, SILQ's embedded finance arm, which has facilitated more than SAR 2B in trade liquidity to merchants inside the Sary ecosystem and will now extend that to the wider economy through procurement, supplier payments and receivables. It is the third capital raise for Fina in as many months, after a $75M Fasanara debt line in July and $100M in facilities from Fasanara, Gemcorp and Amwal Capital Partners in August. SILQ was formed last year through the merger of Saudi B2B marketplace Sary and Bangladesh's ShopUp, backed by a $110M Series C led by Sanabil and Valar Ventures, and SILQ Financial is led by Sary founder Mohammed Aldossary.

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🇪🇬 MNT-Halan has cleared a key step towards its Cairo listing, with the EGX approving 1.6 billion of its shares for temporary listing under the ticker HALN. The approval reserves the company a place on the exchange but doesn't put shares in anyone's hands yet; MNT-Halan now has six months to actually run the offering or the approval lapses. Bloomberg reported in June that the company was working with Citi and EFG Hermes on a listing of its Egyptian business at a $900M to $1B valuation, with its Türkiye, UAE and Pakistan operations kept outside the listed entity.

Read more:

🏠 Huspy has acquired Dubai luxury brokerage LuxuryX, ahead of next month's launch of Huspy Signature, a luxury brand spanning Dubai, Milan, Madrid, Marbella, Barcelona and Ibiza. LuxuryX founder Patrick Hayden and his team join the proptech's UAE property business, which has grown its brokerage network 75% since January. Founded in Dubai in 2020, Huspy operates in 15 cities across the UAE, Spain, Saudi Arabia and Italy, handles around a quarter of UAE residential mortgage activity and has raised roughly $200M from Sequoia, Balderton and Founders Fund. Terms were not disclosed.

🌍 Dubai Future District Fund (DFDF) has committed to a global growth fund managed by Nordstar Partners, the UK investment manager focused on AI, fintech and consumer tech. DFDF is targeting the Series A to Series C gap, where it says regional founders have had little access to investors who have run international expansion themselves. Nordstar has already backed the likes of Kitopi and Silkhaus regionally. It follows DFDF commitments to MetaProp and Isometric in recent months. Cheque size wasn’t disclosed.

🚚 Shorooq and the Emirates Growth Fund have made a growth investment in FMSi, the Dubai fleet management tech company, in the first deal from Shorooq's new private equity strategy. Founded in 2003, FMSi serves more than 1,000 enterprise customers across energy, construction and logistics from offices in the UAE, Oman and Saudi, with a platform covering vehicle monitoring, AI video telematics and fatigue detection. Shorooq built its name on early-stage venture before adding one of the region's first tech-focused credit funds, and crossed $1B in AUM this year across venture, credit, private equity and real assets. It is the firm's first partnership with the AED 1B sovereign-backed EGF.

🍔 Breadfast has launched restaurant delivery, adding food ordering to a platform that already spans groceries, bakery, coffee, pharmacy and a prepaid card through fintech arm Breadfast Pay, and putting the Cairo company into direct competition with Talabat in Egypt. COO Muhammad Habib framed it as customers wanting everything through one app rather than separate services, with hundreds of rider jobs expected as it expands beyond its initial governorates. The move comes seven months after Breadfast raised a $50M pre-Series C from Mubadala, the Olayan family, YC and the IFC. CEO Mostafa Amin has said he wants a global IPO and to take 3% of Egypt's $100B grocery market within three years. Amazon launched 20-minute delivery in Egypt in July, adding a fourth heavily capitalised player to the market, joining the ranks of Rabbit and Talabat.

⚡ Mubadala Capital has co-led Crusoe's $3.9B Series F at a $30.9B valuation, alongside Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners, with QIA and Oman's OIA also participating. "We have partnered with Crusoe since 2022, invested in every round since, and are proud to co-lead this round," said Ibrahim Ajami, head of ventures at Mubadala Capital. Crusoe builds data centres around its own power generation, holds more than $140B in contracted value and 6GW of contracted capacity, and hosted OpenAI's training of Astra at the Abilene campus it designed and built.