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Yango Ventures backs UAE-based Fintech company Comfi AI in its first MENA investment
Yango Ventures has made its first MENA investment, backing Dubai embedded-finance startup Comfi AI in a Pre-Series A round, and the choice of a UAE fintech as its regional entry point says as much about where strategic capital expects emerging-market financial infrastructure to be built as it does about the company itself.
How CUSP Wealth Built a DFSA-Licensed Platform to Close the UAE's Investing Accessibility Gap
Founders Ramesh Murthy and Fedor Panteleev spent decades watching structured investment advice get rationed by wealth. Their answer is a hybrid model that starts at $25.
Global Venture Capital Contracted 72% Between May 2025 and May 2026 — But the UAE Collected Eightfold More Capital in the Same Period
A year-on-year comparison of the January to May funding windows reveals a market that did not simply shrink but reorganised around a narrower set of convictions: early-stage equity replaced private equity, military AI, and autonomous systems replaced datacentre infrastructure as the dominant trending categories, and the United Arab Emirates emerged as the single most anomalous data point in a period otherwise defined by contraction.
Banks Spend $700bn a Year on Technology and Still Cannot Deploy AI. Stitch Is Building the Layer That Changes That.
The financial services sector has spent over $1tn on digital transformation in three years and most institutions still cannot get AI to work at scale. Mohamed Oueida, Founder and CEO of Stitch, has spent three years building the infrastructure foundation that makes it possible, and Andreessen Horowitz has just backed him with $25m to prove it globally.
Andreessen Horowitz makes its first GCC bet with a $25M investment in Saudi fintech platform Stitch
a16z's first GCC investment backs Stitch, the Saudi-based infrastructure platform rebuilding the core systems that financial institutions need before AI can do anything useful.
Coursera and Udemy Complete Merger, Forming $1.5bn Skills Platform
The all-stock deal unites 290 million learners and 18,000 enterprise customers under one company, with ambitions to build an AI-native skills delivery system that goes far beyond course catalogues.
Foodics Launches "Forward Together" Initiative to Ease Cost Pressure on UAE F&B Operators
The restaurant technology platform is offering flexible payment terms, free product access, and AI-powered analytics to support operators across the UAE and GCC as the sector recovers.
SHUAA Capital and Key Capital Launch Partnership to Build MENA's Venture Capital Secondaries Market
Key Fund I LP targets $50 million as the region's first dedicated secondaries manager moves toward its first close, backed by SHUAA's institutional platform.
SAP Agrees to Acquire Prior Labs in €1 Billion Bet on Structured Data AI
The German software giant is buying the Freiburg startup that pioneered Tabular Foundation Models, pledging more than €1 billion over four years to build what it calls Europe's leading frontier AI research lab.
Parag Agrawal's Parallel Web Systems hits $2B valuation as Sequoia leads $100M Series B for AI agent infrastructure
The former Twitter chief executive's startup has more than doubled its valuation in five months as enterprise customers from Harvey to Opendoor scale autonomous agents on its infrastructure, putting Parallel in direct contention with Exa, the recently acquired Tavily, and in-house tooling from foundation model providers.
How Letswork went from a Dubai cafe-finder to civic infrastructure, and what its public-park deal says about where the global flex office is heading next
Dubai Municipality has handed the homegrown hybrid workspace platform the contract to operate workspace inside the city's public parks, expanding the addressable inventory of the global flex office industry beyond commercial real estate for the first time. The first destination opens at Al Barsha Pond Park in May 2026.
Inside Blingwood, the Dubai micro drama studio chasing a slice of a $20 billion global market
Micro-drama revenues hit $11 billion globally in 2025 and are projected to exceed $20 billion by 2030, yet almost nothing is made for the Middle East's multilingual viewers. Blingwood, founded by Mohammad Faizan of Lemonmint Films, is launching in April to take on ReelShort, DramaBox, and a new wave of Arabic-first players, including Scene and Rotana.
Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab Signs a Multi-Billion Dollar Deal With Google
Former OpenAI executive Mira Murati’s startup, Thinking Machines Lab, has signed a new multibillion-dollar agreement to expand its use of Google Cloud’s AI infrastructure, including systems powered by Nvidia’s latest GB300 chips.
Why SpaceX is Willing To Pay $60B for Cursor, and Even Lock-in a Whopping $10B Collaboration Fee
The AI Coding War Just Entered Its Final Phase, SpaceX Kills a $2 Billion Fundraise With a $60 Billion Buyout Offer for Cursor.
Tamatem acquires Istanbul-based Playable Factory in move to build AI-first global gaming platform from Abu Dhabi
The acquisition extends the Abu Dhabi-headquartered publisher beyond content into the advertising technology stack powering global mobile gaming, and lands alongside fresh investment from Square Enix and Next Ventures that takes total funding past $25 million.
Yango Ride embeds ride-hailing directly into ChatGPT across 25 countries
Yango Ride’s integration with ChatGPT lets users plan routes, compare fares, and book rides without leaving an AI conversation — available across more than 25 countries as urban mobility platforms race to meet users where they already are.
Ento Capital and MEG launch $500M platform to convert energy surplus into digital infrastructure
As artificial intelligence drives unprecedented demand for compute capacity, Ento Capital and Masirah Energy Gateway are betting that the next wave of digital infrastructure will be built on surplus energy — and that a $500 million regulated platform is the vehicle to do it.
86% of Indian Startup Founders Are Increasing AI Spend. Here Is What They Are Finding
Elevation Capital's State of AI Adoption survey captures a startup ecosystem that has stopped debating whether to use AI and started grappling with why scaling it is so hard.
Global startup funding hits $297 billion in Q1 2026 as AI mega-deals and sovereign capital rewrite the investment playbook
From OpenAI's record-breaking $122 billion round to Gulf sovereign funds backing a Boston healthtech company, the first week of April revealed how capital is concentrating around AI infrastructure across the US, India, and the Middle East.
Saudi AI start-up Think launches with patents pending and hardware-software infrastructure products set to debut at LEAP 2026
Founded by a games industry veteran and a regional technology sales leader, Think is targeting GPU inefficiency, rising compute costs, and data sovereignty concerns with a unified AI infrastructure platform