Noon Education acquires AlMakhfy to expand exam preparation

Published: 2026-07-07T11:12:41.000Z

Noon, the Saudi education company that many still know as Noon Academy, has bought the exam-preparation platform AlMakhfy in a deal aimed at strengthening the part of its business where it first made its name and expanding its AI-powered digital learning across the Kingdom.

Noon, the Saudi education company that many still know by its old name Noon Academy, has bought the exam-preparation platform AlMakhfy in a deal aimed at strengthening the part of its business where it first made its name. The acquisition folds AlMakhfy's test-prep offering into Noon's wider platform and, according to the company, is meant to expand its AI-powered digital learning across the Kingdom. Financial terms have not been made public, which is common for deals of this size in the region, but the strategic logic is easy to read even without a headline number attached. The move is a neat return to roots. Noon started life in Riyadh back in 2013 as a straightforward test-preparation service, tapping into the region's strong appetite for tutoring around high-stakes exams, before pivoting in 2017 into the social, group-based learning model that made it famous. Buying AlMakhfy reinforces that original exam-prep muscle at a time when Noon is layering artificial intelligence across its products, using data from millions of learning interactions to personalize study paths and match students with the right teachers, peers and content. Rather than build a rival test-prep product from scratch, absorbing an existing one is the faster route to depth. The context around Noon makes the ambition clearer still. The company has raised somewhere north of 60 million dollars across several rounds, counts backers such as Saudi Technology Ventures and Wa'ed among its supporters, and now claims to reach well over 16 million students across eight countries. It sits inside the Saudi Unicorns Program, a government-backed track for the Kingdom's most promising high-growth firms, and its founders have spoken openly about wanting to list publicly and become the region's first edtech decacorn. Bolt-on acquisitions that widen the product range and add users are exactly the sort of thing a company builds before an IPO. The regional picture explains why consolidation is picking up. Saudi Arabia's education market is estimated at around 50 billion dollars, and Vision 2030 has turned human capital development into a national priority, which has drawn a crowd of edtech players competing for the same students, from local names like AlGooru and Faheem to Jordan's Abwaab and Jo Academy pushing into the market. That crowding is now producing deals, including recent AI-focused acquisitions elsewhere in MENA, as larger platforms hoover up smaller specialists to add technology and reach. Noon's purchase of AlMakhfy fits squarely into that pattern, a maturing sector where scale, AI capability and exam-prep credibility increasingly decide who leads and who gets bought.