Happy Friday, friends 👋

Three quick notes before we get into this week’s edition:

Now, let’s get into this week’s edition👇

This week’s round-up is a 5 min read:

In partnership with Hubspot for Startups

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OCTA (🇦🇪 UAE), a fintech automating SME financial operations, including invoicing, payments, collections, and embedded credit, has secured a $20M credit facility from Sukna Fund for Direct Financing to embed short-term working capital financing into its platform and expand credit access for SMEs across KSA.

Octane (🇪🇬 Egypt), a fleet expense management platform streamlining fuel, maintenance, and on-road payments through a closed-loop wallet, has raised $5.2 million in a funding round led by Shorooq, Algebra Ventures, and SC Holding.

SaturnX (🇦🇪 UAE), a stablecoin payments infrastructure startup enabling instant cross-border transfers for B2B money transmitters and fintech platforms, has raised $3 million in a Seed round led by White Star Capital, with participation from institutional investors.

XFOLIO (🇱🇧 Lebanon), a next-generation treasury and wealth management platform unifying portfolio oversight and automation for financial institutions, has raised $2 million in a Seed round from Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP).

Prop-AI (🇦🇪 UAE), an AI-powered proptech platform helping investors and buyers evaluate and purchase real estate through data-driven insights, has raised $1.5 million in a pre-Seed round led by Plus VC, with participation from Joa Capital, Select Ventures, Oraseya Capital, Plug & Play, and strategic angels.

Darwinz AI (🇸🇦 KSA), the company behind Dima, an Arabic-first AI copilot for marketing and PR teams, has raised $325k in a Seed round from Flat6Labs KSA and Glint Ventures, marking its first institutional funding.

Talenteo (🇩🇿 Algeria), an HR tech startup offering a SaaS platform for payroll, compliance, and talent management tailored to African SMEs and mid-caps, has raised a 6-figure USD round led by 216 Capital to accelerate pan-African expansion, starting with Tunisia.

What it takes to build a startup in Iraq, lessons from launching Careem, and why fragmentation, not TAM, is the real signal for venture-scale opportunity in frontier markets.

Feature

By the time Careem formally winds down its ride-hailing operations in Pakistan on July 18, the company will have spent nearly ten years navigating one of the most complex and dynamic mobility markets in the world.

What began in 2015 as a promising bet on Pakistan’s underdeveloped transport infrastructure, and later became one of the Dubai-based company’s most significant growth stories, has, in less than a decade, unraveled under the weight of macroeconomic instability, intensifying competition, and shifting global investment priorities.

🇶🇦🇦🇪 QIA and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council have backed Applied Intuition in a $600M Series F round that values the autonomous systems software company at $15B. This comes just a year after its $250M Series E at $6B. The round was co-led by BlackRock and Kleiner Perkins, with participation from Greycroft, Bond, General Catalyst, Lux, and others. Founded in 2017 by Qasar Younis, a former Partner and COO of Y Combinator, Applied Intuition builds simulation and data infrastructure for autonomous vehicles, working with automakers, AV players like Gatik and Kodiak, and increasingly, defence agencies. The company recently helped the U.S. Army autonomise an infantry vehicle in just 10 days. Qasar was recently on Jack Altman’s podcast, recommend checking that out here.

🌍 Endeavor Catalyst is raising a new $300M fund, its largest yet, to double down on high-growth startups across MENA, LATAM, Africa, and SEA, per Techcrunch. If closed, the fund would push the co-investment firm’s AUM to $800M+. Launched in 2012, Endeavor Catalyst invests exclusively in Endeavor-selected founders at Series A–C stages, co-investing alongside VCs like Prosus, STV, and General Atlantic. Its portfolio spans 360+ startups across 34 countries, with 63 unicorns to date, including Flutterwave, Rappi, Tabby, and Insider. Despite global pullbacks, it completed 13 deals across 7 markets in Q4 2024 alone. Recent MENA-based startups it’s backed include; Tarjama, Thndr, and Sylndr.

🇸🇦 iSchool has acquired SEEDS, the edtech arm of Algoriza, to expand in Saudi Arabia and launch AI and coding programs as an HR benefit for employees’ children. The acquisition gives iSchool access to SEEDS’ partnerships and student base in Saudi, accelerating its push into future-skills education. The deal follows iSchool’s $4.5M funding round in December 2023, led by VentureWave Capital, to scale its K–12 AI and programming platform across MENA.

🇰🇼 Keeta appears to be coming for Kuwait. The international arm of Meituan is ramping up hiring in Kuwait City ahead of a soft launch in H2 2025 and full rollout by early 2026. It’s also open to acquiring a local logistics player to accelerate entry, per Al Qabas (via AGBI). After establishing KSA as its Gulf beachhead, Keeta is now actively recruiting across the UAE, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain. The stakes are high: the GCC online grocery market is expected to hit $53.6B by 2033 (IMARC), and Morgan Stanley projects Keeta could claim 20% market share and $6B GMV by 2028. A subsidy-fuelled blitz is coming.

🇸🇦 Replit and HUMAIN, the PIF-backed AI company, have partnered to make AI-powered coding tools accessible across Saudi Arabia. The collaboration includes a localised version of Replit hosted on HUMAIN Cloud for sovereign data residency, integration of HUMAIN’s Arabic-first LLM (ALLAM), and co-developed education programs to bring AI coding agents to students, professionals, and government teams.

📈 Al Moammar Information Systems Co. (Tadawul: MIS) has fully exited its stake in Anthropic. The Saudi-listed IT firm invested $5 million in Anthropic’s Series D in January 2024 and sold the stake for $9.33 million, booking a $4.26 million profit and an IRR of approximately 50%. The gain will be reflected in its Q2 2025 results. This marks MIS’s second profitable exit from a generative AI giant. Earlier this year, it sold its OpenAI stake for $8.4 million, earning $3.4 million on a $5 million investment. MIS said the Anthropic divestment supports its capital reallocation toward new investment opportunities.

🌾 Egypt-based early-stage fintech fund DisrupTech Ventures has invested in Winich Farms (🇳🇬 Nigeria), a fast-scaling agri-fintech connecting 180,000+ smallholder farmers to markets and financial services across 29 Nigerian states. This pre-Series A deal marks DisrupTech’s first foray outside Egypt, underscoring its growing pan-African ambitions. Winich digitises produce aggregation, payments, and credit access via a network of agent collection points and proprietary Winich Cards, while also eyeing expansion to MENA export markets.

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🎧 This week on VC React, it’s all about second-time founders in MENA, from Karim Jouini and Jihed Othmani, the duo behind Expensya’s $120M exit, returning with ThunderCode and a $9M seed round, to Spotii’s Anusha Iqbal and Ziyaad Ahmed launching legal tech startup Qanooni.