Welcome to the Founding MENA newsletter, bringing you the top stories from across the region every week.
I hope you find the newsletter insightful, but I’m always open to feedback and suggestions. Let’s get into it!
💰 Investment Rounds
🇸🇦 SILQ secured $20M in Shariah-compliant structured financing from Gemcorp Capital. See more here.
🇸🇾 Labby raised $10M from UAE and Saudi investors. See more here.
🇪🇬 Reme-D raised $1.45M in Pre-Series A led by Anara Impact Capital. See more here.
🇸🇦 FLOATY Studio raised $1M from Merak Capital through the Merak Gaming Fund. See more here.
📰 Startup News
Noon launched in 2017 with $1 billion in backing and a mandate to build the Arab world's homegrown answer to Amazon.
What it also built was one of the most valuable talent factories in MENA tech.
I worked with Crustdata to map noon alumni who went on to found their own companies. We found 200+ founders who have collectively raised over $78 million.
Healthcare, gaming, logistics, fintech, payments and investing. Operators who spent years inside one of the region's most demanding e-commerce environments went on to build across the full breadth of the MENA tech stack.
Noon is still less than a decade old. The Careem and Souq alumni networks took years to compound fully.
Noon's is just getting started.
Qatar International Islamic Bank has made a strategic investment in SkipCash.
Earlier this year, SkipCash closed a $4 million Series A with Qatar Development Bank, Qatar Islamic Insurance Group, KBN Group Holding, Finjan Investments, and Doha Tech Angels LLC.
Now Qatar's oldest Islamic bank adds a strategic stake.
SkipCash was founded in 2019 by Mohammed Al-Delaimi. Today it serves more than 10,000 merchants across Qatar and processed over QAR 1 billion in payment transactions in 2025.
The product portfolio covers merchant acquiring, online payment gateways, payment links, QR payments, Tap to Phone (SoftPOS), and mobile payment technologies.
Qatar's largest established financial institutions are now actively co-investing in the fintech companies building the payment infrastructure of the next decade.
The capital goes toward expanding digital payment infrastructure, accelerating product innovation, and GCC expansion. The Third Financial Sector Strategy issued by Qatar Central Bank makes the regulatory context explicit: foster innovation, grow fintech, build a sustainable digital economy.
SkipCash is building squarely in the centre of that mandate.
The European Commission has approved Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), alongside Jared Kushner's Affinity Equity Partners and Silver Lake, to acquire Electronic Arts (EA) in a $55 billion deal.
That's the largest leveraged buyout in history just cleared its biggest regulatory hurdle.
$55 billion for a video game company from a sovereign wealth fund that sits 4,000 miles from Silicon Valley and was, until a decade ago, almost entirely focused on domestic Saudi infrastructure.
The EU Commission found that the acquisition raises no competition concerns, clearing the antitrust threshold. The remaining regulatory gate is the EU's Foreign Subsidies Regulation, which scrutinises deals involving non-EU state-backed capital.
Clearance under that framework is expected by July 30 and is widely anticipated.
The deal was originally announced in September 2025. EA's portfolio includes FIFA, Madden NFL, The Sims, Battlefield, and Apex Legends, franchises with hundreds of millions of players globally.
PIF's move into gaming isn't new. It's been building a gaming portfolio for years through its Savvy Games Group, including stakes in Nintendo, Activision Blizzard, EA, and Take-Two.
The EA acquisition takes that strategy from minority stakes to full ownership of one of the most recognisable gaming IP catalogues on the planet.
MENA is home to some incredible people, but who’s moving where …
We worked with Crustdata to track some of the most notable talent moves across the MENA region this week, from sovereign wealth funds to funded startups.
Here's who moved where:
Edward Winter → Abu Dhabi Investment Council (ADIC) CIO, Real Assets - in from Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) (BlackRock)
Xavier Campbell → radia Saudi Arabia CEO of the new PIF-backed venue-services venture
Oscar Flórez → Littio Co-founder & CPTO - previously at Revolut
Founding MENA has partnered with CapQuest, MENA’s leading equity management platform.
CapQuest’s automatic SAFE tracker is a game-changer. Upload all your SAFEs at once and it instantly models dilution, tracks valuations, and turns fundraising scenarios from a spreadsheet nightmare into something you can run in minutes.
All of our readers can get 20% off their first year with CapQuest using the code: foundingmena20.
Story
Story
Story