Happy Friday, friends 👋

Saudi beauty e-commerce platform Nice One went public on Wednesday on the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul), surging 30% on its first day. Nice One’s founder brothers; Omar Alolayan and Abdulrahman Alolayan, retained over 74% ownership, selling 22% in the offering, potentially raising their combined net worth to nearly $950 million.

Dare we say, nice one!

P.S. 🔮 We just published our 2025 predictions, a collection of markets, trends and themes you should watch out for in MENA tech and VC this year. You can check it out here.

Enjoy this week’s edition 👇

This week’s round-up is a 5 min read:

• 📱 Riyadh-based Zension raises $30 million series A round to bring circularity to the mobile device industry

• 🥛 Exclusive interview with MilkStraw AI’s CEO after $600k pre-Seed

• 📈 Nice One surges 30% on Tadawul public market debut

• 🇸🇦 Orbit Startups and Sanabil Investments launch new accelerator

• 💰 UAE's DAMAC to invest $20 billion in US data centres

🚀 Startup funding round-up

Zension (🇸🇦 KSA), a tech-enabled platform offering warranty and buyback services for electronics, has closed a $30 million Series A led by Wa’ed Ventures, with participation from Sumitomo Corporation and Global Ventures.

JeelPay (🇸🇦 KSA), a fintech specialising in educational finance with a "Study Now, Pay Later" model that allows parents to pay tuition monthly while schools receive upfront payments, has raised $6.6 million in a Pre-Series A round led by Joa Capital, with participation from AlJazira Capital and angel investors.

Revie (🇸🇦 KSA), an interior design marketplace and renovation platform offering end-to-end solutions for residential and commercial projects, has secured $2.5 million in Seed funding led by Sanabil Venture Studio by Stryber.

MilkStraw AI (🇦🇪 UAE), a cloud optimisation startup that reduces AWS cloud costs by leveraging long-term contracts, has raised $600k in pre-seed funding led by Flat6Labs, with participation from AngelSpark, Beyond Capital, and angels.

Exclusive interview

Jawad Shreim: How MilkStraw AI is redefining cloud optimisation ↗

UAE-based cloud optimisation startup, MilkStraw AI, just raised a $600k pre-seed round led by Flat6Labs, with participation from Angel Spark, Beyond Capital, and other angel investors.

We sat down with CEO and co-founder Jawad Shreim to learn more about the problem they're solving, what makes them different, their business model, and their vision for the future.

Highly recommend checking it out ☝️

📈 Public markets

💄 Saudi beauty e-commerce platform Nice One went public on Wednesday on the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul), surging 30% on its first day, debuting at SAR 35 and closing at SAR 45.5. The IPO was heavily oversubscribed, with the institutional tranche 139.4x and retail 7.9x oversubscribed, reflecting strong investor demand. The company now holds a $1.4 billion market cap, making it one of the most valuable internet companies in the region.

This follows similar successful IPOs of Saudi tech firms. Jahez, which listed on NOMU in 2022 before transitioning to Tadawul last month, gained 10% on its first day, while insurtech firm Rasan surged 68% during its June debut. Nice One’s founder brothers retained over 74% ownership, selling 22% in the offering, potentially raising their combined net worth to nearly $950 million.

💰 VC round-up

🚀 Orbit Startups and Sanabil Investments, a PIF-owned company, have launched the Sanabil Accelerator by Orbit to support early-stage startups from Saudi Arabia, the MENA region, and global companies expanding into the market. The four-month program will focus on sales, marketing, and product development while offering $100k in initial funding, follow-on investment opportunities, and hands-on support through market orientation in Riyadh. Key sectors include fintech, healthcare, e-commerce, mobility, and logistics.

🤝 Mintiply Capital and Fuel Venture Capital have partnered to support early-stage startups in the UAE through a dedicated SPV, focusing on funding and scaling high-potential companies. Fuel Venture Capital, with a portfolio spanning 32 countries, will bring its global expertise and resources, complementing Mintiply’s strategic focus on scaling startups through capital deployment, mentorship, and market insights.

🌍 Global investments round-up

💾 Hussain Sajwani, chairman of Damac Properties, has announced a $20 billion investment in US data centres, marking the entry of Damac’s EDGNEX subsidiary into the American market. This follows EDGNEX’s recent $3 billion data center investment in SEA. Damac and Trump have a history of collaboration, including securing rights to develop a Trump Tower in Abu Dhabi last year.

🧬 Tenvie Therapeutics, a biotechnology company specialising in neurological disease treatment through molecular engineering, has raised $200 million in a funding round led by ARCH Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital, and Mubadala Capital, with additional investors participating. The funding will support Tenvie's growth into a multi-clinical asset company. Alaa Halawa will join the board as a Mubadala representative.

 🏦 Acquisitions

🏠 Egyptian proptech platform, Nawy, has acquired property management firm ROA to launch Nawy Unlocked, a service helping property owners generate income from underutilised properties. ROA, founded in January 2023 by Mohamed AbdelMaksoud and Mahmoud AbdelMaksoud, specialises in transforming unfinished units into rental-ready assets. Nawy Unlocked offers comprehensive property finishing, rental management, and financial assistance by covering up to 50% of finishing costs, recouped from rental income.

🤖 AI

📦 Groq has delivered a major shipment of LPUs and GroqRacks to Saudi Arabia for its upcoming AI inference data centre, set to be the world’s largest with a capacity of 25 million tokens-per-second by Q1 2025. Announced at the Global AI Summit in Riyadh, the centre is part of Groq’s partnership with Aramco Digital, which aims to offer token-as-a-service for AI inference. Despite minor delays, the shipment confirms progress, with Groq targeting 1 billion tokens-per-second in collaboration with Aramco Digital.

💾 San Diego-based on-device AI startup Kneron is establishing a subsidiary in Riyadh in partnership with Saudi Arabia's National Semiconductor Hub (NSH) and National Technology Development Program (NTDP), supporting the Kingdom's $266 million initiative to build a fabless semiconductor ecosystem and attract global chip firms.

• Kneron is reportedly in talks to raise $300 million in its latest funding round, which could value the Taiwanese-American company at around $1 billion.

• According to a presentation shown during an Investor Day hosted by NSH in October, this is expected to be Kneron’s final funding round before going public, with a tentative Nasdaq listing planned for 2025 via a SPAC, Spark I Acquisition Corp., sponsored by its investor SparkLabs Group.

• In September, SparkLabs Group also launched AIM-X, an AI startup accelerator in Saudi Arabia.

📈 Tech

🤝 Lenovo Group and Alat, a PIF company, have completed a $2 billion investment and strategic collaboration, receiving all required approvals. Lenovo will establish its MEA headquarters and a manufacturing facility in Riyadh, set to begin production by 2026, creating thousands of jobs. The facility will produce millions of PCs and servers annually with local R&D teams.

🗓️ Opportunities

📢 Applications for Cycle 5 of the Riyadh Seed Program are now open! 🇸🇦 Flat6Labs, offers SAR 500,000 in seed funding, up to SAR 2.4M in follow-on funding, exclusive networking events, mentorship, legal support, and more. Apply now.

🚀 The SANDBOX Accelerator deadline has been extended to 12th January 2025 at 23:59 UAE time! The Oraseya Capital program is designed to level up your startup with investment, mentorship, competitive positioning, GTM strategy, and more. Apply now.

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