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CNTXT AI, the Abu Dhabi-based data and AI company, has closed a $60 million Series A round co-led by AI71 and BlueFive Capital, to fund product development, expansion into new markets, and the deployment of sovereign AI infrastructure for enterprise and government customers globally.
AI71 is Abu Dhabi's applied AI company, built out of the Advanced Technology Research Council's commercialisation arm VentureOne and focused on sovereign, domain-specialised AI powered by the Technology Innovation Institute's Falcon models. BlueFive Capital is the Abu Dhabi investment firm founded in 2023 by former Investcorp executive Hazem Ben-Gacem, which manages more than $4 billion across offices in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, London and Beijing.
CNTXT AI was founded in 2023 by Mohammad Abu Sheikh, whose previous venture LocAI was acquired by AI71, making the lead investor a returning backer. Abu Sheikh is also the founder of SMPL AI, a $25 million fund supporting early-stage AI startups, and the brother of Abdallah Abu-Sheikh, whose AI-powered Islamic finance platform Mal raised a $230 million seed round led by BlueFive in January, the largest seed-stage financing recorded in MENA. The company builds sovereign AI products that allow organisations to develop and scale AI applications while retaining full control over their data, and works with Oracle, NVIDIA and AWS. Its proprietary Arabic voice platform, Munsit, has processed more than one million minutes of speech and serves over 250 enterprises and 150,000 users.
The raise follows a busy few weeks for the company. Earlier in June, CNTXT AI acquired Actualize, a startup building Arabic voice agents trained on Gulf dialects that execute tasks such as bookings and transactions rather than simply answering queries, with Actualize co-founders Muhammed Shabreen and Khalid Ghiboub joining CNTXT AI as CTO and VP of AI Models respectively.
The deal is the latest in a run of large AI and infrastructure cheques from BlueFive, which in February invested $50 million in Abu Dhabi AI company Origen to deploy AI across government services, smart homes and manufacturing.
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