Happy Friday friends 👋

If last week's intro felt like we were hinting at something, well, we were. This week we broke the news that Careem is “strategically pausing” most of its consumer services in Saudi, which was followed closely by our reporting that a significant percentage of the wider workforce across multiple markets have been laid off, including the full closure of the Berlin engineering office.

Rather unfortunately, FWDstart understands that Careem are not the only regional tech company to have made significant cuts over the past week or so, though it's worth noting that MENA is far from alone here, with the likes of Meta, Cloudflare, and Coinbase all announcing significant layoffs this week too, with AI getting the lion's share of the blame (though some would argue it's a convenient excuse to reverse a few years of exuberant hiring). We'll bring you more on these developments over the coming days.

To that end, two quick asks. If you've got a story, a document, or a tip you'd rather not send over regular email, you can now reach FWDstart securely on Signal at fwdstart.32, end-to-end encrypted, and we'll never ask you to identify yourself unless you want us to. And if you'd like to support the kind of original reporting that breaks stories like this (rather than, you know, rewriting press releases), you can do so by signing up for a premium subscription here.

Elsewhere, Saudi’s Khwarizmi Ventures has closed Fund II's first close at $70 million, matching the total size of Fund I in a single close, Mubadala has led a $15 million Series A for UAE embedded finance lender CredibleX, and Moroccan founders Mehdi Rais and Amine Chraibi have raised $5.5 million from Heartcore and Balderton for an AI platform compressing real estate development timelines.

This and much more below 👇

This week’s round-up is a 5 min read:

CredibleX (🇦🇪 UAE), an ADGM-regulated SME lender offering working capital through revenue-based, receivables, and payable financing, has raised $15M in a Series A round, led by Mubadala Investment Company, with participation from Further Ventures.

Siin (🇧🇭 Bahrain), a live shopping platform for buying and selling high-value goods through real-time livestreamed and gamified experiences, has reached $3M total funding, co-led by VentureSouq and Shift Group, with participation from Plus VC, Oqal, and regional angels.

eVoost (🇦🇪 UAE), an AI-powered real estate marketing platform for new-build property developers, has raised $1.2M from Spanish VC First Drop, alongside angels from the Abu Dhabi and Hub71 ecosystem.

Metafare (🇸🇦 KSA), a digital health platform combining VR and AI to deliver remote wellbeing sessions, has raised $1M in its first funding round, backed by Harmonics Ventures and family offices.

Madeed (🇸🇦 KSA), a personalised preventive healthcare platform using biomarkers and AI for early disease detection, has closed its pre-Seed at $925K, with participation from SEEDRA Ventures, Unity Investment Partners, and Seen Growth, alongside existing backer Vision Ventures.

💰 Saudi-based Khwarizmi Ventures has completed Fund II's first close at $70M+, matching the total size of Fund I in 2022. The firm is continuing to raise toward a $100-120M target, as FWDstart first reported last June. Fund II will invest $1-5M cheques into seed and Series A startups across the GCC, up from the $500K-2M range in Fund I. Led by managing partner Abdulaziz AlTurki, Fund I backed 30+ startups including Tamara, Calo, Eyewa, and TruKKer, delivering five exits within its first five years with capital already distributed to LPs.

👤 Sukna Ventures has appointed Mazin Alshanbari as GP. Alshanbari was previously CIO at Jada Fund of Funds and before that led Jada's VC and Venture Debt portfolio for nearly six years, having joined as employee number one when the fund of funds launched in 2018. Sukna Ventures, the tech investment arm of Sukna Capital, is targeting $133M in assets according to CEO Fares Bardeesi speaking to Asharq Business last year, and has invested in 20+ startups across Saudi and MENA including MoneyHash, OCTA, SPICE, and Abhi.

🚗 Careem is winding down most of its consumer services in Saudi and has made sweeping layoffs across multiple markets, FWDstart broke this week. Co-founder Abdulla Elyas confirmed a "strategic pause" of quick commerce in KSA, with a talent placement site listing 62 senior staff seeking new roles and stating that "with the exception of Rides and Bikes, Careem KSA is winding down most of its platform services." Separately, Careem's Berlin engineering team has been laid off in full with the office closing entirely, and cuts have hit departments across the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan.

The retreat comes roughly 13 months after Careem launched grocery delivery in Riyadh and lands as majority owner e& recently appointed a new Group CEO. Uber, which retains 42% of Careem Technologies, told investors its Q1 2026 mobility revenue was hit by the Middle East conflict, citing Saudi and the UAE specifically.

💳 Lean Technologies has expanded its Pay by Bank capabilities in the UAE under the newly operational Open Finance framework, consolidating deposits, collections, checkout, and subscription flows into a unified A2A payment suite. Lean has processed billions in TPV in the UAE since 2022 with clients including e&, Careem, DAMAC, and OKX, helping businesses save $100M+ on card fees. The expansion follows Lean becoming the first fully licensed open banking provider in Saudi Arabia in March and receiving In-Principle Approval from CBUAE, giving the company licensed or near-licensed status in both of the Gulf's largest fintech markets.

🇲🇦 Moroccan founders Mehdi Rais and Amine Chraibi have raised $5.5M pre-seed for Davis, an AI-native company compressing early-stage real estate development timelines. The round was led by Heartcore Capital and Balderton Capital, with participation from Evantic, Yellow VC, and Entrepreneur First. Davis emerged from Entrepreneur First's Bridge programme, becoming one of the fastest teams in EF history to receive IC approval. The Paris-based team of nine is built around discrete diffusion technology and is introducing Gaudi-1, a proprietary model for architectural generation under regulatory constraints.

Tell your story to MENA tech: Share your product or thesis with 6,000+ founders, VCs, and operators across the region. Newsletter, podcast, or a dedicated deep-dive – we'll find the right format.

Build your narrative: We work with a small number of partners on branded editorial series, podcast episodes, and multi-part campaigns built around your story. Not ads. Content people actually read and listen to.

Commission original research: Custom market reports, ecosystem maps, and data-driven analysis published under your brand. Built by the team behind the MENA VC Playbook and the Careem Mafia Database.

Something specific?: From content strategy to event moderation, we work with a handful of partners on bespoke projects each quarter.

Have a story for us? Reach FWDstart securely on Signal at fwdstart.32. End-to-end encrypted, anonymous if you want it to be.