Founding MENA #29
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
- 🇦🇪 Epic Markets raised $10M in pre-seed from Karatage. See more here.
- 🇦🇪 Bundle raised $5.5M in pre-seed led by Ethereal Ventures and Further Ventures. See more here.
- 🇸🇦 Ash Games raised $1.5M in seed from Merak Capital and Impact46. See more here.
📰 Startup News
Spain’s Konecta opened its Middle East and Africa headquarters in New Cairo as part of a $100 million investment plan.
The facility is Konecta’s first global Centre of Excellence for generative AI, the company’s first anywhere in the world.
Cairo already hosts 800 Konecta specialists across AI-powered customer experience, multilingual support in seven languages, data analytics, technical support, and IoT solutions.
The company is planning to triple that to approximately 3,000 employees by the end of 2028.
Konecta chose Cairo for the same reason every global company that takes Egyptian talent seriously eventually makes the same call: the depth is real. Ahmed El Harany, Vice Chairman for MEA, said what he observed was the depth of Egyptian talent and the confidence global clients place in AI-powered services delivered from Cairo.
The generative AI centre will develop agentic tools, including Konecta’s Kolibri orchestration platform, for deployment across the company’s international client base spanning four continents.
Read more here.
Brookfield has reached a $2 billion first close for its Middle East private equity fund.
The fund is backed by Public Investment Fund (PIF), alongside a group of regional and international institutional investors. Brookfield itself is committing $500 million to the vehicle.
Around half of the fund's capital is earmarked for Saudi Arabia.
This is one of the most significant private equity commitments to the GCC in recent years.
The mandate of the fund spans buyouts, minority growth investments, financial services, business services, consumer, industrials, technology, and healthcare.
Brookfield's Riyadh investment team gives this fund local sourcing capability. Deals will be found and executed from within the Kingdom.
The GCC private equity market has been attracting increasing institutional interest for the past three years. What's changed is the quality and permanence of that interest.
Read more here.
📰 Other News
Where do KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) graduates end up?
KAUST is Saudi Arabia's multi-billion-dollar bet on becoming a science superpower.
I used the Crustdata to trace 3,664 KAUST alumni and rank the companies employing the most of them.
Here are the top 10:
- aramco: 221
- Boston Consulting Group (BCG): 21
- Meta: 18
- NEOM: 18
- HUMAIN: 13
- McKinsey & Company: 11
- Red Sea Global: 11
- SLB: 11
- Amazon: 10
- NVIDIA: 10
Saudi Aramco employs more KAUST graduates than the next nine companies on this list combined.
On one side, the new Saudi giga-projects soaking up deep-tech talent at home: NEOM, HUMAIN, Red Sea Global.
On the other, the global giants pulling it abroad : Meta, Amazon, NVIDIA.
KAUST is becoming the talent engine both sides are fighting over.
🤝🏼 Tools for Founders
Founding MENA has partnered with CapQuest, MENA’s leading equity management platform.
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All of our readers can get 20% off their first year with CapQuest using the code: foundingmena20.
That’s all for this week, thanks! Sam.
First published 3 Aug 2026 on Substack
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