Junaid Wahedna
Honours
The story
Junaid Wahedna was born in Mumbai and moved to Dubai as a child, later studying industrial engineering at Columbia University in New York before working in merchant banking on Wall Street. In 2015 a taxi driver told him he had put his life savings into Apple shares because he avoided interest-based banking, and Junaid saw that Muslims who wanted to invest had few accessible Sharia-compliant options. He left banking to start Wahed, which launched in the US in 2017 as a halal robo-adviser. Saudi Aramco's venture arm Wa'ed led a $25 million Series A in 2020 and a $50 million Series B in 2022, and athletes such as Khabib Nurmagomedov and Paul Pogba became investors and ambassadors. The company was fined $300,000 by the SEC in 2022 over misleading statements, and a further $250,000 in 2024 for not disclosing that athlete endorsers were paid. In March 2024 Junaid handed the CEO role to Mohsin Siddiqui and became chairman.
