News
Startups
+5
Mar 31, 2026
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4 min read
Egyptian-American founder Will Ahmed's Whoop raises $575m at $10.1bn valuation with QIA, Mubadala and 2PointZero all participating
Whoop now has over 2.5 million members globally, was cash flow positive in 2025 and doubled bookings year on year to a $1.1 billion run rate.
Results
+4
Mar 30, 2026
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3 min read
Exclusive: Tabby's Saudi arm posts $55 million profit on $378 million revenue in first audited annual accounts
The numbers land at a moment when Tabby is widely understood to be preparing for a Tadawul listing, with reports that HSBC, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are advising on a potential flotation.
Startups
+4
Mar 26, 2026
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5 min read
Lebanese founder Tarek Mansour's Kalshi valued at $22B after latest $1B round
The round marks the third time in under a year that Kalshi's valuation has roughly doubled, from $5 billion earlier in 2025 to $11 billion in December to $22 billion now.
Sudan
+4
Mar 26, 2026
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4 min read
Scalvy, founded by Egyptian and Sudanese engineers, raises $13.9m Series A co-led by Silicon Badia to solve AI's power bottleneck
The company serves over 350 enterprise clients and has processed more than $2 billion in transaction volume across the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Fintech
+3
Mar 26, 2026
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5 min read
Lean Technologies becomes first fully licensed open banking provider in Saudi Arabia
The company serves over 350 enterprise clients and has processed more than $2 billion in transaction volume across the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
SWFs
+4
Mar 26, 2026
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5 min read
Jeff Bezos pitches Gulf sovereign wealth funds on $100B manufacturing automation fund
If it closes at that scale, the fund would rival SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund as the largest private investment vehicle ever assembled, and like the Vision Fund before it, its viability would depend heavily on Gulf sovereign capital.
Startups
+4
Mar 25, 2026
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3 min read
Saudi edtech GAGA raises $2.5m pre-Series A led by Abu Dhabi's Phoenix Venture Partners
The platform offers more than 1,000 live programmes across over 200 subjects, combining academic and skill-based learning through real-time teacher-student interaction.
Fintech
+3
Mar 24, 2026
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4 min read
AWS Bahrain region disrupted by drone activity for second time in three weeks
The incident comes just three weeks after drone strikes on March 1 directly hit two AWS facilities in the UAE and caused physical damage to infrastructure in Bahrain, triggering what became one of the most severe cloud outages in the region's history.
Foodtech
+4
Mar 23, 2026
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5 min read
Travis Kalanick folds CloudKitchens into new robotics company Atoms, raising questions over shelved Middle East IPO
The announcement ends eight years of stealth during which thousands of Atoms employees were reportedly not permitted to publicly name their employer.
Fintech
+2
Mar 20, 2026
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4 min read
Ramp, the $32B fintech co-founded by Lebanese entrepreneur Karim Atiyeh, acquires Billhop to expand into UK and Europe
Ramp, which combines corporate cards, expense management, vendor payments, procurement, travel booking and automated bookkeeping into a single platform, currently processes over $100 billion in purchases annually and serves more than 50,000 businesses.
Jordan
+3
Mar 20, 2026
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4 min read
Endeavor Jordan selects Replit founders Amjad Masad and Haya Odeh, marking the network's 100th unicorn globally
The selection comes weeks after Replit closed a $400 million Series D at a $9 billion valuation led by Georgian, with participation from QIA, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Craft Ventures and Y Combinator, among others.
Morocco
+3
Mar 20, 2026
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5 min read
Speedinvest launches dedicated Africa fund with €40m EIB anchor for fintech and mobile-first startups
The EIB's commitment is structured against a maximum fund size of €200 million under the bank's project terms, though Speedinvest has not disclosed a final fundraising target for the vehicle.
Fintech
+3
Mar 16, 2026
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5 min read
Exclusive: Kudwa closes $1.1M for AI-powered finance platform with backing from MENA, US and UK investors
The round, backed by 1818 Venture Capital, F6 Ventures, and Sparked VC, will fund product development and multi-geography GTM expansion.
News
+2
Mar 13, 2026
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2 min read
Egyptian martech startup Converted acquires fashion e-commerce platform Mitcha
Mitcha's network of more than 300 local fashion designers will be integrated into Converted's AI-powered advertising platform, which serves thousands of merchants across Egypt and Saudi Arabia and is launching a new product that ties ad spend directly to verified sales rather than clicks.
Morocco
+4
Mar 13, 2026
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3 min read
inDrive acquires Pakistan's Krave Mart as the ride-hailing app pushes deeper into quick commerce
The all-stock deal, first agreed last year, has been approved by Pakistan's Competition Commission. inDrive is already the most downloaded ride-hailing app in Pakistan, Egypt, and Morocco, and has been scaling grocery delivery in the country since January through a partnership with Krave Mart.
News
+3
Mar 12, 2026
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3 min read
Shorooq joins $1B seed round in Yann LeCun's AMI Labs, one of the largest AI seed financings ever, at a $3.5B pre-money valuation
The Abu Dhabi-based firm invested alongside Bezos Expeditions, Temasek, and NVIDIA, in the Paris-headquartered startup, which is building "world model" AI systems designed to reason about physical environments rather than just predict text.
Jordan
+4
Mar 12, 2026
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3 min read
Jordanian founder Amjad Masad's Replit triples valuation to $9B, as it targets $1B in ARR by year-end
The AI developer platform, founded in 2016 by Masad alongside Faris Masad and Haya Odeh, has raised a $400M Series D led by Georgian, with Qatar's QIA among the backers.
Fintech
+2
Mar 2, 2026
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4 min read
AWS data centre in the UAE struck by "objects," taking fintech startups offline as Iranian missiles hit the Gulf
Unidentified objects struck an Amazon Web Services facility in the UAE on Sunday, triggering a fire and a cascading outage across at least 38 cloud services. Sarwa, Stake, Liv by Emirates NBD, and ADCB all reported disruptions.
News
+2
Feb 27, 2026
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4 min read
G42 opens job applications for AI agents, joining a global race to put bots on the org chart
The Abu Dhabi technology group, which last year led a $55 million round in Applied AI and is building chip safeguards to satisfy Washington, has begun recruiting AI agents into structured enterprise roles.
News
+2
Feb 27, 2026
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8 min read
Peak XV raises $1.3B amid partner exodus while quietly deepening its MENA portfolio
The firm formerly known as Sequoia India closed its first independent fundraise after three senior partners departed over a profit-sharing dispute on a 52x return. Meanwhile, GV Ravishankar has been quietly building from Dubai, sitting on the boards of Tabby, Huspy, and Lean Technologies, and leading four MENA deals in the past year.
