Author: Mahdeehassan

We are proud to announce that Google is backing STV’s new AI Fund, a dedicated fund established to enable the growth of AI-native startups across the Middle East and North Africa. This commitment signals a transformative step towards enabling AI startups at their early stage and accelerates their growth beyond the region. The global momentum around artificial intelligence continues to accelerate, with state-of-the-art models and the infrastructure to train them improving at a fast pace. Closer to home, regional governments and technology companies are actively embracing the opportunity, as efforts to localise AI models and infrastructure have picked up significantly…

Las Vegas-based AI infrastructure company TensorWave has secured $100 million in new funding to accelerate the development of data centres built primarily with AMD hardware. The round was led by Magnetar Capital and AMD Ventures, with additional participation from Maverick Silicon, Nexus Venture Partners, and Prosperity7. This latest investment brings TensorWave’s total capital raised to $146.7 million, according to Crunchbase. Founded in 2023 by Darrick Horton, Jeff Tatarchuk, and Piotr Tomasik, TensorWave aims to provide more affordable and scalable cloud services by leveraging AMD’s GPU capabilities. The company has already deployed a dedicated training cluster consisting of 8,192 AMD Instinct…

Abu Dhabi, May 14, 2025 – South Korea and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) brought together their next-generation leaders to explore future cooperation in science, technology, innovation, and sustainability. A special exchange event was held at the Emirates Foundation in Abu Dhabi, hosted by the Korea Foundation (KF). The event featured participants from the KF Global Fellows program and the UAE government’s National Experts Program (NEP), marking the first formal engagement between rising STEM leaders from both countries. The gathering served as a platform for in-depth dialogue on shared national goals, including sustainability through innovation, the future of energy, talent…

Nqoodlet, the Saudi-based fintech platform revolutionising SME financial management, has announced the successful close of its $3 million seed round. The round was led by Waad Investments, with participation from OmanTel, 500 Sanabil Investment, Oqal, Seed Holding and other strategic investors. Founded by Mohamed Milyani and Yara Ghouth, Nqoodlet is optimising financial operations for small and medium businesses across Saudi Arabia and the GCC. Its platform provides smart corporate cards, real-time expense tracking, financial automation, and a hub for SME services — all in one seamless ecosystem. Nqoodlet’s mission is simple yet ambitious: to eliminate financial chaos and help businesses focus on growth, not paperwork.…

Panasonic Marketing Middle East and Africa (PMMAF) today announced a dynamic new partnership with Al Essa Industries Co., appointing them as the distributor for Panasonic’s comprehensive range of premium large home appliances, including state-of-the-art washing machines and refrigerators, across KSA. This strategic alliance fuses Panasonic’s globally recognized portfolio of cutting-edge appliance technologies with Al Essa Industries’ deep understanding of the KSA consumer landscape as well as its extensive, well-established distribution network. The core focus of this collaboration is to precisely address the evolving needs and preferences of households throughout the Kingdom. KSA remains a cornerstone market for Panasonic within…

Fayez Al-Anazi, the entrepreneur who transformed the used car market through the founding of the “Syarah” platform, announced the closing of the pre-seed investment round for his new platform “Tuba”, with a total value of 30 million Saudi Riyals (8 million USD). The round was led by Al-Waalan Investment, with participation from a group of angel investors. Tuba aims to redefine healthcare management by offering innovative technology solutions powered by artificial intelligence, with the goal of improving efficiency and enhancing the experience for both patients and healthcare providers. Tuba: Innovation Transforming the Healthcare Market After achieving notable success in transforming…

erad, the Riyadh-headquartered alternative financing platform for SMEs, has successfully raised $16 million [SAR 60 million] in a Pre-Series A round to accelerate its growth and expand its operations in Saudi Arabia and beyond. The round was backed by leading global and regional funds, including YCombinator, Nuwa Capital, Khwarizmi Ventures, Aljazira Capital, VentureSouq, Oraseya Capital, and Joa Capital. SMEs remain the backbone of the GCC economy, but access to capital remains a constant growth challenge with an estimated $250 billion credit gap. The funding will fuel erad’s mission to offer fast and flexible financing solutions to underserved small and medium-sized businesses…

Built in the UAE, Munsit sets a new global standard for Arabic speech recognition, powering seamless transcription across private and public services DUBAI, UAE – April 30, 2025 – CNTXT AI, the UAE-based Data and AI company, today announced the launch of Munsit — a next-generation Arabic speech-to-text model that outperforms every global model on Arabic, including those from OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft and ElevenLabs. Munsit” — derived from the Arabic root for “to listen” — symbolizes a breakthrough in voice technology that truly listens with attentiveness and understands the richness of Arabic speech. Developed entirely in the UAE, Munsit sets…

Abu Dhabi-based Resolv Labs has announced a $10 million seed funding round to accelerate the growth of its yield-bearing stablecoin protocol, Resolv. The round was led by Cyber.Fund and Maven11, with notable participation from Coinbase Ventures, SCB Limited, Arrington Capital, Animoca Ventures, and others including Gumi Cryptos, NoLimit Holdings, and Robot Ventures. The new capital will be used to diversify Resolv’s yield sources, including the addition of Bitcoin-based strategies, and deepen integration with institutional digital asset managers. The company also plans to expand its reach by launching on additional blockchain networks to target a broader user base. Resolv’s core innovation lies in offering a delta-neutral yield strategy through its stablecoin, USR, which is pegged to the…

Arabic.AI emerged from stealth mode today, unveiling what executives call the first truly agentic AI platform specifically engineered for the Arabic language. The Dubai-based startup, with offices spanning MENA, the U.S., and Europe, enters the market with substantial technical advantages over global competitors. Founder’s Vision: A Deeply Local, Globally Competitive Model Founded by serial entrepreneur Nour Al Hassan, recognised for building language technology provider Tarjama& Arabic.AI has developed Pronoia, a proprietary large language model that benchmarks show outperforming GPT-4, Deepseek, Cohere and other leading systems on Arabic language tasks. “For too long, Arabic has remained an afterthought in the global…