Greetings MENA entrepreneurs!

We’re excited to bring you this week’s edition filled with the latest updates from the MENA startup ecosystem.

Let’s dive in!

In The News

• Mubadala invested in Aquarian and Therapeutics while acquiring a South American sailing team

• AngelSpark invested in Tapper (UAE/AdTech)

• Masdar acquired Greece’s largest renewables investor

• Bahrain secured a record $6.8bn in foreign investment

• Shorooq Partners finalized its second $100 million credit fund

• Breega closed an Africa-focused VC fund

• China selected Morocco for Europe’s EV battery supply

• Abu Dhabi-backed Cerebras announced IPO plans

Ecosystem Updates

• Dubai Future Foundation and Meta launched an AI incubation program

• TIEC announced the winners of the Startup10 program in Egypt

• EWA Accelerator's Demo Day winners announced

• 14 startups won the SCALE award in Muscat

• Jusoor’s Disruptors project began in Istanbul and Amman

• Morocco aims for a top spot in Africa's startup funding

Startup Highlights

• BaseTracK won the We Make Future startup competition

• Rasan (KSA/Fintech) goes public on Tadawul

• BitOasis expanding in GCC with a new license and Bahrain office

• PayBokra (Egypt/Fintech) planning expansion to Saudi Arabia and UAE

• LEAP 71 (UAE) is revolutionizing rocket engineering with AI and 3D printing

• Careem partnered up with Payrails to enhance MENA payments

Upcoming Programs & Opportunities

• CreaTech & All Things Media 2.0 programs - Bahrain

• Innovate for a Sustainable Future Challenge - Lebanon

• Google for Startups AI First accelerator - MENA

• 10k2Startup Initiative - Africa

• Zayed Sustainability Prize - Global

• Hello Tomorrow Challenge - Global

• Elevate Program by Blackbox - Global

• Apply to Zendesk Ventures for funding - Global

Must Attend Events This Week

• How to Turn Your Value Proposition into Product Market Fit - 24 June, Virtual

• 1trepreneur Founders Meetup - 25 June, Dubai

• FINNOVEX Qatar - 25 June, Doha

• Dubai AI Campus Demo Day - 26 June, Dubai

• Q&A with Rasmal Ventures - 26 June, Doha

• BigTech Conference - 26-29 June, Tunis

• Leaders in Fintech Awards - 27 June, Dubai

• Lebanese Tech Ecosystem: Challenges and Opportunities - 30 June, Beirut

Interesting Stuff

• UAE Startup Ecosystem: The Middle East’s Silicon Valley

• Here’s why MENA is world’s fastest-growing crypto market

• Decoding NutriCal’s journey to nutritional clarity and food safety

• Entrepreneur Mahmoud Bartawi on cooking up a startup success

• The Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2024 (GSER 2024)

• Podcast: Entrepreneurship as a way out of the bottleneck in Palestine

Techy Bytes

• Umm Kulthum hologram to perform in Morocco

• Deliveroo UAE launched an electric bike pilot

• Aramco adopting heat-sensing construction helmets

• Nvidia surpassed Microsoft as world’s most valuable company and then lost the spot after a 3% drop

• OpenAI acquired Rockset, while Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s former chief scientist, launched a new AI company

• Former Snap engineer launched a social network where AIs and humans coexist