Happy Friday, friends 👋

And more importantly, Eid Al Adha Mubarak to those celebrating!

In the spirit of the holiday, we intended to keep things relatively short and sweet today, but as it turns out, there’s actually a surprising amount to unpack.

Karim Jouini and Jihed Othmani, the team behind Expensya (acquired for north of $120 million in 2023), are back at it. Despite swearing off startups post-exit, the bug has clearly proven too hard to shake. Their new venture, Thunder Code, is taking aim at the pain of QA by using AI agents to reimagine how software is tested. Early days, but definitely one to watch after their $9 million Seed round.

On the semiconductor front (yes, again): GlobalFoundries, majority-owned by Mubadala, has announced a $16 billion investment to scale chip production in the U.S. Semiconductors have become a recurring subject in nearly every roundup so far this year, and GlobalFoundries has a particularly compelling backstory. It’s one we plan to revisit soon, especially through the lens of sovereignty, a thread that, when we zoom out, is quietly running through nearly all of the long-form pieces we’re currently developing behind the scenes.

And if we’ve talked semiconductors ad nauseam this year, venture debt isn’t far behind. We’ve got updates from Shorooq Ventures and Stride Ventures on that front, along with Abdulaziz Al-Turki’s media push to build momentum for Khwarizmi Ventures’ $100 million-plus second early-stage fund.

On the diaspora front, Egyptian-born Hussein Ahmed has raised $7 million for Limited, his self-custody, stablecoin-powered banking platform. And speaking of stablecoins, Ripple’s enterprise-grade stablecoin RLUSD has just been approved by Dubai’s DFSA for use within the DIFC.

But before we get properly into the meat and drink of it, a very warm welcome to many of you who are joining us for your very first weekly roundup since subscribing via Wednesday’s Tamara deep dive. We’re super glad to have you here. Don’t be a stranger!

Without further ado, let’s get into it 👇

This week’s round-up is a 5 min read:

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Kumulus Water (🇹🇳 Tunisia), a water-tech startup that designs atmospheric water generators that extract drinking water from air humidity without the need for infrastructure, has raised $3.5 million in a Seed round led by Paris-based Satgana, with participation from Blue Terra, Techmind, and existing investors including Flat6Labs and WILCO.

Shipbee (🇶🇦 Qatar), a logistics and e-commerce enablement platform that provides AI-driven shipping, warehousing, and fulfilment for D2C brands and SMEs across the GCC, has secured $235k in pre-Seed funding led by Saudi’s GrowthX.

eVoost (🇦🇪 UAE), an AI-native real estate platform that replaces traditional sales funnels with AI-powered virtual agents, integrated directly into developers’ CRMs and sales channels, has raised undisclosed Seed funding led by Qora71.

Saudi Arabia’s fintech crown jewel is now profitable. But its Q1 financials come with caveats, and reveal a seemingly quiet re-architecture of its business model.

Funding

🤖 Paris and Tunis-based Thunder Code has raised $9 million in Seed funding to rethink how software is tested, using AI agents instead of humans.

Founded by Karim Jouini and Jihed Othmani, the team behind Expensya, Thunder Code is their follow-up to one of Africa’s biggest tech exits. Expensya was acquired by Swedish procurement platform Medius in 2023 for a reported $120 million+.

After the deal, Jouini became CTO at Medius, overseeing the integration of six companies across three continents. One pain point stood out everywhere: QA was still slow, manual, and brittle.

Thunder Code replaces that process with autonomous AI agents that test like real users: flagging UI bugs, reviewing specs, simulating flows, and offering product feedback.

🇦🇪 Mubadala-backed GlobalFoundries has announced a $16B investment to scale chip production in New York and Vermont, one of the largest US semiconductor expansions since the CHIPS Act. The move strengthens US-based supply for clients like Apple, AMD, Qualcomm, and SpaceX, targeting rising demand for AI chips, 22FDX low-power tech, and silicon photonics. Of the total, $3B will go toward R&D in packaging and next-gen GaN power tech. Founded in 2008 via an AMD-Mubadala partnership, GlobalFoundries is now 81% owned by the UAE sovereign fund and ranks as the world’s third-largest foundry by revenue.

🇰🇼 Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), the SWF with over $1T in assets, has joined the $100B AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP) as its first non-founder financial anchor investor, aligning with founding members BlackRock, Microsoft, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, and Global Infrastructure Partners. AIP aims to mobilise $30B in equity, with potential to scale to $100B with debt, for AI data centres and energy infrastructure.

💸 Venture Debt

💸 The Arab Fund’s Badir Fund has invested in Shorooq Partners’ Nahda Fund II, a $100M venture debt vehicle launched in May 2024 and backed by Korea’s IMM Investment Corp as a minority partner. Regulated by FSRA ADGM, the fund targets profitable tech startups in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It follows Nahda I, which backed Pure Harvest and Tamara. Recent deals from Fund II include $15M for fintech Abhi and $12.5M for self-storage platform The Box.

🌍 India’s Stride Ventures is doubling down on Saudi Arabia, opening a second GCC office as it targets $500M in regional AUM by 2026. The venture debt firm already operates in the UAE and launched its largest target fund to date, a $300M vehicle, back in December 2024 to back high-growth startups across geographies. With the addition of its Saudi office, Stride now manages five locations across India, UAE, UK, Singapore, and KSA. In July 2024, it made its first GCC venture debt investment with a $1M deal into UAE-based agri-fintech Maalexi.

💰 New funds

🪙 Saudi-based Khwarizmi Ventures is raising a second fund targeting $100M–$120M to back early-stage startups across MENA, with a focus on Saudi-based and KSA-bound companies. Speaking to Alarabiya Business, Managing Partner Abdulaziz Al-Turki called it a “golden opportunity” for early-stage investing, pointing out that MENA went from zero unicorns a decade ago to eight today, and could reach 60 by 2035. Khwarizmi’s first fund closed at $70M, with 80% deployed and the rest reserved for follow-ons. Its portfolio includes 29 active companies such as Calo, Eyewa, and TruKKer, and four exits including Tamara (secondaries) and POSRocket.

🧪 Algeria has launched a $600M National Venture Studio Programme to attempt to build 1,000 deep tech startups across all 58 provinces over five years. Backed by the Algerian Startup Fund (ASF), national research body CERIST, and MENA-based venture studio DeepMinds, the initiative will endeavour to turn research from over 150 institutions into market-ready ventures, prioritising AI and sovereign tech solutions

📰 Initiatives

📊 Egypt’s MSMEDA, backed by the World Bank, has partnered with Visible.vc and leading VCs including Foundation Ventures, Algebra, Sawari, Shorooq, and Endure to launch a unified portfolio reporting system for startups. The initiative, rare in scope for the region, aims to standardise how data is collected and shared between startups and investors, addressing inefficiencies caused by fragmented reporting practices. With rollout targeted by Q2 2025 and the first ecosystem-wide report due in 2026, Egypt is betting that better data will unlock greater foreign investment and streamline local capital deployment.

🦄 Endeavor has launched the UAE’s first Unicorn Builder programme, to fast-track a select group of scale-stage startups toward billion-dollar valuations. The inaugural cohort features 10 startups, each averaging four years of operations and a combined $100M+ in funding, with three led by women co-founders. Over five months, participants will receive tailored mentorship, expert-led workshops, and strategic fundraising support. You can check out the cohort in the image above.

🇪🇬 Egyptian-born founder Hussein Ahmed has raised $7M for his latest fintech startup, Limited, bringing total funding to $10M since launching in 2024. Based in San Francisco, Ahmed, also the former founder of Oxygen, has built a self-custody, stablecoin-powered banking platform that operates across 176 countries. The $7M seed round was led by North Island Ventures, with backing from Third Prime, Arche Capital, Collab+Currency, and SevenX Ventures. Limited offers global bank accounts, premium cards, and cross-border payments, all anchored in stablecoins. The company is targeting high-growth regions including LATAM, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East

👕 Indian menswear brand Snitch has raised $40M in a Series B round led by 360 ONE Asset to scale from 55 to 100+ stores and expand into the Middle East and South Asia by end-2025. Founded by Siddharth Dungarwal in 2020, Snitch started offline before pivoting online during COVID and gaining traction with Gen Z shoppers. The round included $32.75M in primary capital and $7.2M in secondary. Backers include IvyCap Ventures, SWC Global, and the Ravi Modi Family Office.

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🎧 This week on VC React, we break down the UAE’s AI strategy following the launch of OpenAI and G42’s Stargate UAE, examine the collapse of QIA-backed unicorn Builder.ai, explore what it takes for diaspora founders to succeed in Silicon Valley, and discuss why Iraq’s emerging startup scene is gaining momentum.

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