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This week on VC React, Qatar’s QIA joins Anthropic’s $13B round at a reported ~$183B valuation. Is this sovereign capital chasing pure returns—or staking influence and future partnerships across local AI ecosystems? With eye-watering price tags, how do we actually value frontier-AI plays: by performance and distribution, revenue run-rate, compute leverage…or narrative and access?
We then dive into Munify’s $3M seed (YC-backed) to build a neobank for the 10M+ Egyptian diaspora sending >$30B in annual remittances. Can a community-native product win before Wise or Revolut decide to localize? And does Munify’s B2B rails (payouts, card issuance, business flows) strengthen defensibility—or distract from owning the core remittance UX?
Finally, Intella unveils Ziila, a full Arabic digital human (face + voice + dialect). Is this the moment Arabic AI goes mainstream—from call centers and media to civic services—or will Big Tech ship look-alikes before startups cement distribution? Also: what happened to Siri and Alexa’s lead, and why did OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google Gemini stop short of giving us a named, on-screen persona?
This week’s guests
Dina El-Shenoufy, Co-Founder & General Partner, F6 Ventures
Husameddin AlMadani, General Partner, 2Pi Ventures
