Founding MENA #36

A wave of notable deals and new programmes for founders dominated the region’s startup headlines this week, highlighted by major rounds for Barq and Tabby, a SAR 750 million ($200 million) Saudi SME capital programme announced at Money20/20 Middle East in Riyadh, and a new Snowflake for Startups rollout in the UAE. Barq closed a $329.5 million Series A at a $1.85 billion valuation led by Noon Investments, Sohar International Bank and M20 Fund, while Tabby raised $233 million in a Series F at a $6.5 billion valuation led by Blue Pool Capital. Separately, Lendo and Austria’s Quantic Financial launched a SAR 750 million institutional capital programme to finance Saudi SMEs through Shariah-compliant structures.

"The challenge most AI startups face is what happens the moment an enterprise customer asks about data governance, security architecture, and compliance," said the summary of Snowflake’s new programme, which is being positioned to remove that barrier for UAE founders.

Deals and strategic moves

Beyond the headline rounds, the week saw a mix of growth financing and strategic facilities: Tarabut secured $50 million in strategic financing from Riyad Bank and X-Tech Fund; Rize obtained a $50 million facility from Jadwa Investment; and BRKZ raised $31 million combining $13 million in Series B equity and $18 million in growth debt led by Wa’ed Ventures and 500 Global. Egypt’s Synapse Analytics closed a $13 million Series B led by Partech.

In exits and acquisitions, Huspy acquired LuxuryX Agents as it reported record performance across revenue, transactions and recruitment. Huspy — which was founded in Dubai in 2020 and has raised roughly $200 million from investors including Sequoia Capital, Balderton, Founders Fund, and Fifth Wall — now facilitates approximately $1 billion in transactions every month and handles about 25% of residential mortgages in the UAE. The firm also announced a forthcoming Huspy Signature luxury brand fuelled by LuxuryX’s two decades of market expertise.

Aramco alumni network mapped

Work with Crustdata produced a mapping of companies founded or co-founded by Aramco alumni, revealing 688 alumni founders across 767 companies. Collectively they have raised over $300 million in disclosed funding and include a mix of venture-backed and bootstrapped businesses. Selected companies and founder names with disclosed funding amounts include:

• Gridware — $97M — Abdulrahman Bin Omar
• Lucidya — $39M — Zuhair Khayyat
• Nearpay — $20M — Hamzah Al Ghamdi
• PayTabs — $20M — Abdulaziz Al Jouf
• Nejree — $19M — Ibrahim Al Mogren
• Builtop — $11M — Ayman Aljohani
• penny — $10M — Mohamad Ibrahim
• Sirdab — $10M — Abdulrahman Alnamlah
• Telgani — $10M — Abdulkader Almkinzy
• WIDMO — $9M — Tomasz Trzesniowski

Snowflake for Startups: practical benefits and early adoption

Snowflake launched Snowflake for Startups in the UAE to give founders access to its AI Data Cloud and enterprise-grade data infrastructure from day one. The offering includes production-ready AI infrastructure with the Cortex REST API to switch between frontier AI models in a secure environment, access to more than 12,600 potential customers via the Snowflake Marketplace, credits and engineering support through the Snowflake Startup Accelerator, and strategic backing from Snowflake Ventures. Sarwa, the UAE investment platform, is already using Snowflake to unify data across databases, front-end systems, customer service platforms and compliance tools.

Outlook

With large rounds for fintechs and a rising focus on enterprise-grade infrastructure for AI startups, the ecosystem appears to be balancing capital inflows with increasing attention on compliance and go-to-market scale. The Lendo–Quantic programme could open a new channel of foreign institutional capital into Saudi SMEs if it proves repeatable at scale, while Snowflake’s offering aims to lower the technical barriers that typically stall enterprise deals for early-stage AI companies. Meanwhile, the mapping of Aramco alumni activity underscores the depth of founder talent already building businesses across the region.