Happy Friday friends 👋

Such is the way of the world at the moment, it’s another week with a distinctly global flavour, though still shaped by regional influence just a little further afield.

Before that though, we did manage to get our hands on Tabby's first ever published audited annual results for 2025 earlier this week. We dig into what they reveal about the performance of MENA's most valuable fintech's Saudi subsidiary, alongside input from KSA GM Abdulaziz Saja on where the BNPL giant is heading next.

On the AI front, MGX has wasted no time leading another colossal AI round. Fresh off backing Anthropic's Series G in February, it’s now co-led rival OpenAI's historic $122B round at an $852B valuation. The capital is already being deployed, rather incredulously, with a move into media via the acquisition of everyone’s favourite SV daily news tech show TBPN for what the FT is reporting was a deal in the “low hundreds of millions.”

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Elsewhere, Elon Musk's SpaceX has reportedly filed confidentially for what is likely to be the largest IPO in history, surpassing even Aramco’s 2019 offering. The move carries broader implications for a suite of Gulf actors, namely HUMAIN who backed xAI to the tune of $3B at the turn of the year, following the AI outfit’s recent merger with SpaceX.

We've also got Egyptian-American founder Will Ahmed's Whoop raising at over a $10B valuation with QIA, Mubadala, and 2PointZero all participating, Wa’ed Ventures-backed AI chip startup Rebellions raising a $400M pre-IPO round, and two Tunisian co-founders joining Y Combinator with their AI recruitment startup.

This and much more below 👇

This week’s round-up is a 5 min read:

CarniStore (🇦🇪 UAE), a digital-first premium butchery platform combining sourcing, proprietary production, and online retail, has raised $12.2M in a strategic minority investment, backed by Emirates Growth Fund (EGF), to scale industrial operations, expand into new product verticals, and pursue regional growth.

estaie (🇦🇪 UAE), an AI-native extended-stay marketplace targeting bookings of 30 to 365 nights, has raised a 7-figure pre-Seed round, led by Plus VC and Orbit Ventures, with participation from Falak Angels and Value Makers Studio.

Mezza (🇦🇪 UAE), a hospitality platform providing restaurants with upfront capital in exchange for future food and beverage credit, has raised an undisclosed Seed round, backed by angel investors including the founders of PropertyFinder and Jellysmack and the chairman of Deel.

Hamilton Labs (🇪🇬 Egypt), a financial infrastructure company issuing USDh, a dollar-pegged stablecoin connecting emerging market users with sovereign yield opportunities, has raised an undisclosed round, backed by AXIAN Investment.

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⌚ Whoop, founded by Egyptian-American entrepreneur Will Ahmed, has raised $575M at a $10.1B valuation with QIA, Mubadala, and Abu Dhabi-listed 2PointZero all participating in the Series G. The Boston-based wearable health platform now has over 2.5 million members globally, was cash flow positive in 2025, and doubled bookings YoY to a $1.1B run rate. Ahmed, the son of an Egyptian immigrant who arrived in the US at 22, grew up on Long Island, captained the Harvard squash team, and founded Whoop as an undergraduate in 2012. The company plans to open Whoop Labs Doha, its first international R&D facility, later this year.

🇹🇳 Tunisian founders Rihab Lajmi and Badis Zormati have joined Y Combinator's Spring 2026 batch with Asendia AI, an agentic recruitment platform building voice AI agents that conduct live phone interviews and screen candidates around the clock. The pair say they're the first Tunisian founders to join YC, with Lajmi the first Tunisian woman accepted into the programme. Both grew up in Tunisia before leaving at 18 to study in Germany – Lajmi worked at Microsoft and Google before co-founding, Zormati spent six years at Infineon working on AI systems.

💳 Tabby, MENA's most valuable fintech, has published its first audited annual accounts for its Saudi subsidiary, reporting net profit of $55M on revenue of $378M for 2025. The accounts, audited by EY, cover the SAMA-licensed entity that handles all of Tabby's BNPL originations in the Kingdom, and do not reflect the wider Tabby group, which also operates in the UAE and includes the company's technology, collections, and holding entities across multiple jurisdictions. Revenue grew 42% YoY, up from $267M in 2024, while net income nearly doubled from $30M, an 82% increase that marks the company's second consecutive year of profitability. Tabby's most recent private valuation was $4.5B, set by a secondary share sale in October 2025 backed by HSG and Boyu Capital.

💰 Abu Dhabi's MGX co-led OpenAI's $122B round at an $852B valuation, the largest private funding round in tech history. MGX was named alongside SoftBank, Andreessen Horowitz, D.E. Shaw, TPG, and T. Rowe Price as co-leads, with anchor commitments from Amazon ($50 billion), Nvidia ($30 billion), and SoftBank ($30 billion). The Mubadala and G42-backed vehicle now has positions in OpenAI, xAI (alongside QIA), and also co-led Anthropic’s $30B Series G in February. OpenAI said it is generating $2B in monthly revenue, with ChatGPT now at over 900M weekly active users.

🚀 SpaceX has filed confidentially for an IPO that could raise up to $75B at a $1.75T valuation, per Bloomberg, which would surpass Saudi Aramco's $29B listing as the largest public offering in history. The filing covers the entity that now includes xAI following February's all-stock merger, meaning Gulf sovereign investors who backed xAI – QIA, MGX, and PIF-owned HUMAIN ($3B in xAI's $20B Series E) – are now sitting on pre-IPO SpaceX stock. Kingdom Holding and Oman Investment Authority also hold positions, alongside earlier IHC and Alpha Dhabi stakes. The IPO is expected to be the first of three mega-listings in 2026, ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic – Gulf sovereign capital is now embedded in the pre-IPO shareholder base of all three.

🇰🇷 Rebellions, the South Korean AI inference chip startup backed by Aramco's Wa'ed Ventures, has raised $400M in a pre-IPO round led by Mirae Asset and the Korea National Growth Fund at approximately $2.34B valuation. Total funding has reached $850M, with $650M raised in the past six months alone. Wa'ed invested $15 million in July 2024, its first Korean investment, alongside an MOU to deploy Rebellions' chips in Aramco data centers. The company has since established a Saudi subsidiary and deployed chips to Kingdom customers.

🔧 Aramco's Prosperity7 Ventures has participated in a Series A for Gimlet Labs, a San Fran-based AI infra company that distributes AI workloads across different processor types via a multi-chip cloud inference platform. The round was led by Menlo Ventures with participation from Eclipse Ventures, Factory, and Triatomic Capital. Prosperity7, the $3B venture arm of Aramco Ventures, continues to build exposure to US AI infrastructure alongside Wa'ed's recent investments in Rebellions and Resemble AI.

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