Middle East and North Africa See Surge in Tech Investments as January Ends

Capital kept moving across the Middle East and North Africa as January came to an end, with mega-rounds, record local fundraises, and strategic deals signaling investors’ continued appetite for scalable platforms, from property and wealth tech to insurance tech, mobility, and Arabic-first artificial intelligence.

In Saudi Arabia, wealthtech startup Vennre raised $9.6 million in a pre-series A round combining equity and debt. The round was co-led by Vision Ventures and anb seed Fund, with participation from Sanabil 500, Ace & Co, Plus VC, and strategic individual investors. Founded in 2021 by Ziad Mabsout, Anas Halabi, and Abdulrahman Al-Malik, Vennre provides high earners with Shariah-compliant access to private market investments. The company plans to use the capital to expand its client base, launch new platform features, and strengthen its presence in line with Vision 2030.

UAE-based Property Finder secured $170 million in funding led by Mubadala Investment Company, alongside another sovereign wealth fund and BECO Capital. Mubadala and the second sovereign fund each invested $75 million, while BECO committed $20 million from its $250 million Growth Fund I. Founded in 2007, Property Finder operates a property marketplace with advanced search and filtering tools. The fresh capital will support the company’s aim to build the region’s leading real estate operating system focused on transparency and data-driven decision-making.

In Morocco, proptech startup Yakeey completed a $15 million series A round, the largest in the country to date, with investments from Beltone Venture Capital, IFC, Enza Capital, and 212 Founders. Yakeey is developing a digital platform integrating property search, valuation, brokerage, and financing, positioning itself for regional expansion.

Other notable rounds included Moroccan shared mobility startup Enakl, which closed a $2.3 million seed round to develop flexible transport networks, and UAE-based insurtech Mantas, which raised $1.77 million to launch parametric insurance products covering cloud outages and digital downtime.

In the e-commerce sector, Saudi Arabia’s Juthor secured $500,000 in a pre-seed round led by Flat6Labs, while UAE-based Yozo.ai raised $1.7 million to develop an AI-native revenue engine for automating e-commerce growth and marketing.

Regional M&A activity also gained momentum. Jordanian edtech platform Abwaab acquired Egypt-based Apex Education to expand its end-to-end tutoring and admissions services. In the lifestyle technology space, Glamera Holding signed a memorandum of understanding to acquire Bookr Group, a multi-market operator active in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, in a move to build a unified, AI-powered platform for beauty and wellness services.

In AI innovation, Arabic.AI announced a collaboration with Stanford University’s Center for Research on Foundation Models to establish the first comprehensive benchmark for evaluating Arabic large language models. The initiative aims to provide transparent metrics for Arabic AI models and contribute to public research resources for the wider enterprise ecosystem.

Investors’ continued enthusiasm across wealthtech, property tech, mobility, insurance, e-commerce, and AI highlights a growing appetite for scalable, technology-driven solutions across the Middle East and North Africa.