MENA startups expanding globally
Qatar Development Bank lists up to $5.5 million for established startups expanding into Qatar, and up to $1.1 million for early teams. Cash is paid in milestone tranches. The program is not new. Portfolio totals in social posts are not on the official page.
Replit acquired Atta on 25 September and put interactive charts in its chat. Founders Omar Shaik and Amine Ben Khalifa joined. The price was not disclosed. Replit called Atta San Francisco-based. Regional notes call it Egypt-founded.
Huspy acquired Italian intermediary Integra Finance and said it will invest $86 million in Italy. The purchase price was not disclosed. Integra has more than 160 advisers. Italy is Huspy’s fourth market after the UAE, Spain and Saudi Arabia.
GFCI 40 ranked Dubai first among FinTech industry professionals and ninth overall. The emirate is still the only MEASA centre in the global top 10. A separate FinTech offering table in the same report placed Dubai 11th.
Octa raised $3.5 million in seed funding led by MEVP to take its AI agents for accounting firms into the US. Total equity is about $5.7 million. The company says 520-plus firms joined OCTA Flow in six weeks.
Bahrain’s Tanami closed an undisclosed investment round with tali ventures, Qatar Development Bank and 1818 Ventures. The private-markets platform wants the capital for Qatar and a larger investor base after CMA approval in Saudi Arabia.
UAE fintech Sav has raised USD 3.5 million in a pre-Series A round led by Phoenix Venture Partners, taking total funding to about USD 6 million as it pushes into Saudi Arabia and scales its AI finance platform.
Dubai-founded Enhance has raised 18.2 million dollars in equity and venture debt to accelerate its US expansion. Its GCC-built personal-training software already runs in 700-plus American gyms, a rare case of Gulf tech exported to the world's largest market.
Swvl has added 1.5 million dollars to its strategic round, upsizing it to about 14.5 million dollars led by the Sawiris-backed Coefficient. The MENA-born, Nasdaq-listed mobility firm will fund a US expansion, capping a striking turnaround to first profit.
China's Z.ai has confirmed it created Ox Alpha, the stealth AI model that topped global usage charts before anyone knew its maker. A test version of GLM-5.3-Flash, it paired frontier-level coding performance with near-zero cost and anonymity.