Founding MENA #31
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
- 🇦🇪 Naran secured $10M in debt-equity financing from Landel. See more here.
- 🇯🇴 Arab Therapy raised $2M in pre-Series A led by Manara Ventures. See more here.
- 🇸🇦 Majestic Mind Games raised $1.45M led by Merak Capital and Impact46. See more here.
- 🇸🇦 Fitting raised $1.1M in seed from a strategic investor. See more here.
- 🇪🇬 UMAMI invested $1M in its new AI-powered learning platform. See more here.
- 🇦🇪 Cobi secured $1M in pre-seed led by Lunara Partners. See more here.
📰 Startup News
The first cohort of Mastercard Lighthouse UAE has been selected.
Six AI startups advanced to a four-month intensive mentorship programme, backed by Mastercard and the UAE AI Office.
The six companies:
- Loyyal: blockchain and AI-powered loyalty platform for banks, airlines, and retailers, enabling interoperable rewards and personalised customer engagement
- Newform Technologies: agentic AI studio platform for regulated financial institutions, automating complex banking operations with full data privacy and enterprise-grade security
- NodeShift: secure platform enabling organisations to use frontier AI models (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini) by anonymising sensitive data before it leaves the organisation
- Polynome: agentic AI automating customer interactions and operational workflows across Arabic and English for banks, government, and transport sectors
- zypl.ai: Stanford-born AI risk management company using synthetic data for credit scoring, fraud detection, and collections across 20+ markets globally
- Valura.Ai: end-to-end AI investment platform covering onboarding, asset allocation, real-time monitoring, and intelligent portfolio rebalancing through UAE and India-licensed channels
Since 2018, Mastercard Lighthouse has facilitated over 300 corporate-startup collaborations, generated more than $1.3 billion in investment, and produced multiple unicorns from 228 alumni.
This is the first UAE edition.
Read more here.
📰 Other News
289 former stc employees went on to found their own companies. Collectively, they've raised over $2.5 billion.
stc is Saudi Arabia's largest telecom operator and the most valuable listed company in the Kingdom after Aramco. It is also the biggest founder factory in Saudi tech.
I teamed up with Crustdata to track the founders down across 15,605 stc alumni.
- Tamara - Turki Bin Zarah - $2.4B
- Rize | رايز - Mohammed Alfraihi - $38M
- Zetta Technologies - Abdulsattar AlMaimani & Faisal Al-Abdulsalam - $13M
- COGNNA - Ziyad Alshehri - $11M
- EdfaPay - Veysel Baydogan - $10M
- LAWAZEM | لوازم - Nasser Alshaya - $9M
- Hakbah هكبه - Waiel Eid - $8M
- Mala Inc. - Musaab Hakami - $7M
- Maly - Mo Ibrahim - $7M
As we see the MENA tech ecosystem continue to mature, founder factories like stc become increasingly important for the ideation, launch and growth of future unicorns.
Space42 launched a share buyback programme of up to 2.5% of its issued share capital, approved by the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange.
Space42 reported H1 2026 revenue of $260 million, up 15% year-on-year.
Managing Director Karim Michel Sabbagh was direct: the buyback reflects confidence that the current share price undervalues the intrinsic worth of the business.
Space42 was formed through the merger of Bayanat Smart Solutions and Yahsat Space Services in 2024, backed by G42, Mubadala, and IHC, it now operates across satellite communications, geospatial analytics, and AI.
With global reach and a growing commercial pipeline that includes the $7 million autonomous mobility agreement with South Korea's A2Z signed this week, Space42 has demonstrated strong growth since launch and management are doubling down on their conviction.
Read more here.
🤝🏼 Tools for Founders
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.
That’s all for this week, thanks! Sam.
First published 17 Aug 2026 on Substack
The week in MENA tech, every Monday. Free.
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