Founding MENA #5

Newsletter #5

Founding MENA · 9 Feb 2026 · 6 min read

UAE Fintech

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

🇦🇪 Kitopi raised $50M in growth capital led by EvolutionX (Temasek + DBS Bank’s private credit platform). See more here.
🇦🇪 Qureos raised $5M in seed funding led by Prosus Ventures and Salica Oryx Fund. See more here.
🇶🇦 SkipCash raised $4M in Series A from Qatar Development Bank, Qatar Islamic Insurance Company, KBN Holding Group, and others. See more here.
🇦🇪 Daleel raised $3M in pre-seed funding from a prominent real estate angel investor. See more here.
🇱🇧 HAQQ Legal AI raised $3M to date led by Sowlutions Ventures. See more here.
🇸🇦 Viero raised $1.2M in seed funding led by Watheeq Capital and Share Investment Co. See more here.

📰 Startup News

Shorooq announces a new growth fund

Shorooq just launched a $200M late-stage growth fund backed by Qatar Investment Authority.

Announced at Web Summit Qatar, the fund launches under Shorooq's Qatalyst Series and targets late-stage and pre-IPO companies with proven scale, strong fundamentals, and clear exit pathways through public listings.

Here's why this matters:

MENA has plenty of early-stage capital ($50K-$3M); it has some growth capital ($10M-$30M), but it's always lacked consistent, institutional late-stage funding ($50M-$150M+) for companies ready to go public.

Shorooq is institutionalising the region's pre-IPO engine, making public-market readiness a repeatable pathway, not an episodic outcome.

Founded in 2017, Shorooq is now a multi-strategy investment firm spanning venture capital, credit, private equity, and real assets. With this fund, they can support founders across the entire capital stack: from early conviction through scale-up financing to late-stage growth and IPO execution.

Most VCs stop at Series B. Shorooq goes all the way to the listing bell.

The GCC is entering a new investment cycle: concentrated sovereign liquidity, a maturing cohort of scale-ups, and public markets finally opening up to tech listings.

This fund brings the sophisticated, long-duration capital needed to turn private champions into public leaders.

Read more here.

ADQ consolidates into L’IMAD

The Supreme Council for Financial and Economic Affairs consolidated ADQ into L'IMAD, creating a sovereign investment powerhouse with 25+ investment companies, 250+ subsidiaries, and a portfolio spanning TAQA, PureHealth, Wio Bank, Etihad, and Abu Dhabi Ports.

Here's why this is massive for founders in the UAE:

One clear door to sovereign capital. Before: ADQ and L'IMAD operated separately. Founders navigated multiple relationships, unclear mandates, and overlapping portfolios. Now: One unified platform. One investment thesis. One decision-making structure. This means faster decisions, clearer pathways, and less confusion on who to approach.
Better access to growth capital. ADQ has backed AppliedAI, Wio Bank, and dozens of emerging platforms across fintech, healthtech, and AI. Now those resources sit under one roof with L'IMAD's global investment firepower. This means that more capital is available for scale-ups, follow-on rounds, and long-term growth, eliminating the need for constant fundraising cycles.
Focus on building national champions. Chaired by Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed (Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi), L'IMAD's mandate is clear: build globally competitive platforms in the strategic sectors of energy, healthcare, pharma, food, aviation, ports, financial services, industrial tech, and AI. If you're building in these verticals, you now have a sovereign-backed investor actively looking to create category leaders, not just financial returns
Patient capital that thinks in decades. L'IMAD is protecting 50+ years of Abu Dhabi's investment policy continuity. This isn't a VC fund with a 7-year exit timeline. This is nation-building capital. For founders, this means less pressure to chase short-term valuations, more support through market cycles, and alignment with long-term visions.
Global partnerships become accessible. L'IMAD will expand through private investment funds in partnership with strategic global players. That means UAE founders get access to international co-investors, operational expertise, and global distribution channels through one relationship.

Abu Dhabi now has three principal sovereign funds: ADIA (global diversification), Mubadala (strategic sectors and tech), and L'IMAD (national champions and operational platforms).

For founders building in the UAE, this consolidation signals one thing: the capital, infrastructure, and political will to build billion-dollar companies is fully aligned.

Read more here.

🔦 Spotlight

The war of MENA’s BNPL unicorns

Tabby vs Tamara: how did two BNPL companies launched a year apart and both hit unicorn status within months of each other?

Here's what you need to know about the two largest BNPL companies in MENA.

Tabby: Hosam Arab (ex-CEO Namshi) and Daniil Barkalov (ex-Careem) watched Western BNPL companies implode while GCC consumers actually needed credit. They saw a structural advantage: low card penetration + strong payment behaviour = profitable BNPL.

Tamara: Abdulmajeed Alsukhan (ex-Nana) saw a different gap: only 15% of Saudis had credit cards, but e-commerce was exploding. BNPL wasn't a convenience play; it was essential financial access.

Both companies have raised substantial investment rounds to fuel growth:

Tabby:

$604M equity raised + $350M+ debt
Nov 2023: $1.5B valuation (MENA's first independent fintech unicorn)
Oct 2025: $4.5B valuation
Investors: Wellington Management, PayPal Ventures, Mubadala, Peak XV Partners
Relocated HQ from Dubai → Riyadh (2023)

Tamara:

$556M equity raised + $400M+ debt
Dec 2023: $1B valuation (Saudi Arabia's first homegrown fintech unicorn)
Led by SNB Capital & Sanabil Investments, sovereign-backed from day one
First SAMA-licensed BNPL provider

With growth comes traction (unless you’re Pied Piper):

Tabby:

15M+ users
40K+ merchants
$6B annualised transaction volumes
150K+ Tabby Cards issued
20%+ volumes now in-store (physical retail)

Tamara:

10M+ users
30K+ merchants
KSA, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain
6x revenue growth in <2 years

BNPL adoption in Saudi Arabia exploded: 76K users (2020) → 10M users (2022). The market was big enough for multiple winners.

Tamara played the Saudi-first, sovereign-backed game. Tabby played the regional innovator with product diversification (Card, Shop, Plus) and global institutional capital.

In massive, underserved markets, there's room for multiple category leaders. MENA's fintech opportunity is real, scalable, and capital-efficient compared to Western markets.

This is what happens when exceptional founders execute in parallel on the same massive opportunity.

📰 Other News

OpenAI partners with G42

OpenAI announced this week that the company is building a UAE-specific version of ChatGPT in partnership with G42.

OpenAI and G42, chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, are developing a fine-tuned ChatGPT for local Arabic dialects, UAE government use, and content aligned with local laws and values.

This isn't happening in isolation; the UAE-OpenAI partnership is massive and has been strengthening for over 12 months now:

Stargate UAE (announced May 2025): 1GW AI supercomputing cluster in Abu Dhabi, first phase (200MW) goes live in 2026. Partners include G42, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco, and SoftBank.
MGX (G42's vehicle) invested in OpenAI at a $500B valuation (Oct 2025). At the same time, Sam Altman received an honorary doctorate from Abu Dhabi's AI university.
In mid-2025, the UAE became the first country in the world to offer nationwide free ChatGPT Plus access to all residents.

This is AI sovereignty through partnership, not isolation. There is limited news on when the version of the GPT platform will be released publicly.

Read more here.

Canva opens a Dubai HQ

Canva has just established its regional headquarters in Dubai and is committed to supporting 250k SMEs over the next five years.

The $42B design platform signed the agreement with Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy at World Governments Summit 2026, attended by H.E. Omar Sultan Al Olama (Minister of AI, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications).

Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy will support Canva's regional operations expansion. In return, Canva will provide 250,000 SMEs and individuals with access to advanced digital design and productivity tools launching this year.

To date, 1 in 8 internet users in the UAE are already using Canva, and over 54M designs were created in 2025 alone!

This isn't just another tech company setting up shop in Dubai. This is a $42B platform giving 250,000 SMEs access to tools that democratise design, branding, and content creation.

Cliff Obrecht (Canva Co-Founder & COO): "Dubai is home to millions of people building and creating at scale. Establishing our regional headquarters here means we can work more closely with small businesses, enterprises, and creators across the region."

If you're building a startup in Dubai or the UAE, you now have access to world-class design infrastructure through Canva's partnership with Dubai Chamber.

This is what strategic public-private partnerships look like when executed well.

Read more here.

That’s all for this week, thanks! Sam