Andreessen Horowitz makes its first GCC bet with a $25M investment in Saudi fintech platform Stitch

Stitch, the Saudi Arabia-based operating system built for modern financial institutions, has raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz's a16z — marking the Silicon Valley investment firm's first deployment of capital in the GCC. The round brings Stitch's total funding to $35 million, with existing investors Arbor Ventures, Raed Ventures, COTU Ventures, and SVC participating alongside the lead.

The fresh capital will go toward accelerating product development, deepening Stitch's presence across the GCC and broader MENA region, and expanding its global go-to-market operations.

"Financial institutions globally run on fragmented, legacy infrastructure that should have been left behind 20 years ago. Now every institution wants to adopt AI, but AI on top of broken infrastructure is a dead end," said Mohamed Oueida, Founder and CEO of Stitch. "We built Stitch to fix that, and we're proud to have Andreessen Horowitz alongside us."

Built by operators who spent years at NPCI, FIS, Barclays, Santander, and Azentio, Stitch gives financial institutions a single, cloud-native stack spanning lending, cards, payments, and ledgers — one they can adopt gradually, module by module, without ripping out existing systems overnight. The proposition is straightforward: replace the fragmented core with a modern system of record, and the AI transformation that institutions have been promised but cannot reach becomes possible.

The commercial traction is already notable. More than $5 billion was transacted on the platform in the six months to May 2026. Customer numbers grew tenfold in 2025, and revenue grew twentyfold over the same period.

"Financial institutions are sitting on decades of infrastructure debt, and that debt is now the single biggest obstacle to AI adoption. What Stitch is building — a modern, unified system of record — is what makes everything else possible. We're excited to support them, and honoured to make this our first investment in the region," said Alex Rampell, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

Why the a16z investment matters

The Gulf's financial sector has spent years constructing the surface layer of digital transformation: apps, products, and customer-facing services that project modernity while the infrastructure beneath them has not meaningfully changed in decades. A16z's decision to make Stitch its first GCC investment is not simply an endorsement of one company. It is a read on where the region's next constraint lies, and a signal that the infrastructure gap is no longer a problem the market can defer.

Andreessen Horowitz manages over $40 billion in assets across funds focused on bio, crypto, games, growth, and infrastructure. Its portfolio includes some of the most consequential technology companies of the past two decades: Airbnb, Coinbase, Facebook, GitHub, Instacart, Lyft, Roblox, and Slack. The firm built its reputation on a services model, embedding talent, marketing, and executive networks into its portfolio companies rather than functioning as a conventional, hands-off investor. That model travels with every cheque it writes.

The firm has been increasingly active beyond the United States, with growing attention to the Middle East and emerging tech ecosystems. The Stitch investment is the clearest marker yet of its GCC ambitions.

The underlying problem Stitch addresses is neither new nor localised. Despite spending over $1 trillion on digital transformation in the last three years, most financial institutions are still running on the same fragmented legacy cores that have defined the sector for decades. Globally, banks spend $700 billion a year on technology, yet launching a new product still takes years and upgrading a core system still carries the risk of bringing operations to a halt.

That tension has sharpened with AI. No financial institution can meaningfully adopt AI without a clean, reliable system of record to build on. Stitch's cloud-native stack, covering lending, cards, payments, and ledgers, is designed to be that foundation, adopted incrementally and without the operational disruption of wholesale replacement.

Stitch currently operates across the GCC, Egypt, Kenya, and Southeast Asia, with customers including Raya Financing, the lending arm of Hyundai and Peugeot, LuLu Exchange, Noqodi, and Foodics. The company's stated ambition is to serve financial institutions worldwide, with the GCC as its base.

What makes a16z's entry significant is not the dollar figure. It is the institutional signal that the GCC's infrastructure problem, long acknowledged and rarely solved, is now attracting the kind of capital that moves on conviction rather than curiosity. The Gulf has spent a decade building financial ambition. Stitch, and the bet behind it, is a wager that the foundation still needs to be laid.