Welcome back to your weekly journey through the MENA startup landscape! This week we are bringing you the latest news, trends, and opportunities from across the region

Let’s get started!

Fundraising Roulette

UnifyApps (UAE/SaaS Solutions) raised $20M Series A

Epik Foods (UAE/Cloud Kitchen Tech) raised $15.5M

Pemo (UAE/FinTech) raised $7M pre-Series A

Popcorn AI (UAE/AI) raised $500k pre-seed

EpiBone (UAE) raised an undisclosed round

FasterCapital (UAE) invested in TeaLeaf

Dubai Future District Fund invested in TransFi!

Boxy (KSA) raised SAR 15M

Bubbl (KSA/Social Network) secured $350K pre-Seed

Efreshli (Egypt/Interior Design ) raised an undisclosed Seed round

Writer (GenAI) founded by May Habib and Waseem AlShikh raised $200M Series C

11x (AI) founded by Hasan Sukkar (Syria) raised $50M

Main Headlines

QiCard acquired Miswag (Iraq/e-commerce)

YOUGotaGift sold 91% of its shares to giftee (Japan) for $26.6M

SVC (KSA) committed $20M to BECO Capital (UAE)

Startupbootcamp announced $250M fund for African startups

Real estate investments exceeded $48B during Cityscape in Riyadh

Egypt established special ministerial group for entrepreneurship

Orange Egypt Invested 50M Euros to Support Startups in Africa

Ecosystem Updates

Tamkeen launched overseas expansion program in collaboration with astrolabs

Flat6labs partnered with Pifrance

Berytech launched 2nd ScaleSmart batch

Dubai Chambers Signed MoU with Noqodi

Virtual Accelerate Prosperity concluded LaunchUp program in Syria

Tech Innovation Awards 2024 winners announced in Dubai

AstroLabs published Unlock Saudi ConTech report

Startup Highlights

Talabat confirmed IPO date for Dubai Financial Market

Botim became fully Emirati after G42 acquired CEO Stake

Careem Pay launched instant transfers to India & Europe

JOZO (KSA) launched fractional real estate ownership in Saudi Arabia

Lamsa (UAE) won Edtech Platform of the Year at Tech Innovation Awards 2024

Abhi (UAE) won Fintech Solution of the Year at Tech Innovation Awards 2024

Open For Application

Sharjah Startup Studio (s3) | UAE

Green Sprint by Startupbootcamp | UAE

SANDBOX by ORASEYA | UAE

Sanabil Accelerator by 500 Global | KSA

Saudi100Brands | KSA

Tamkeen Overseas Program | Bahrain

EDVS Program | Egypt

Aswan Bootcamp Series | Egypt

RESPOND Accelerator | Global

Cool Events This Week

• Rowad Conference | 18-20/11 Doha

• M360 MENA | 18/11 Dubai

• Misk Global Forum 2024 | 18/11 Riyadh

• Digital Product Management Workshop | 18/11 Baghdad

• Jordan’s Startup Scene Session | 18/11 Amman

• Dubai Future Forum | 19/11 Dubai

• Expanding Your Business to Saudi Arabia | 20/11 Virtual

• Smart Finances for Tough Times by Berytalks | 20/11 Virtual

• Investor Day @DIFC | 21/11 Dubai

• Design بالعربي! | 23/11 Cairo

• Entrepreneurship for Sustainability & Impact Conference | 23/11 Doha

• Forbes ME Medical Tourism & Wellness Summit | 23/11 Dubai

• Art x Business event | 23/11 Amman

• Xmatch Demo Day | 24/11 Cairo

• QSTP AI Week | 24-28/11 Doha

Techy Bytes

Saudi planning $100B AI and data infrastructure group

MBZUAI research team won Google academic research award

Atlas-Chat 9B (Morocco) demo went live

Khalifa University developed a multi-agent LLM to autonomously manage cellular networks

Oman Lens launched a locally developed optical satellite

ChatGPT can now read some of your desktop apps

OpenAI to release AI agent tool as soon as January