Noha Gad

High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) occupy a unique space in the financial ecosystem, sitting at the intersection of private wealth and public consequence. Yet, for all their visibility in luxury markets and investment circles, their decision-making processes remain widely misunderstood. Today's HNWIs are navigating a world of increased regulatory scrutiny, shifting family dynamics, and a growing expectation to use their resources deliberately.

For many high-net-worth individuals, the central question changes once wealth has been created. Instead of focusing only on earning more, they must decide how to protect capital, diversify investments, manage risk, maintain liquidity, and pass wealth on responsibly. For example, a successful entrepreneur who has sold a business may suddenly move from having most of their wealth tied to one company to managing a large pool of investable assets. That transition requires a very different mindset, one centered on long-term planning rather than short-term growth alone.

Who is a high-net-worth individual?

A high-net-worth individual is someone with liquid assets of at least $1 million in investable or liquid assets, excluding their primary residence. Liquid assets held by HNWIs include cash and investments that can be easily liquidated or converted to cash, including stocks. These individuals need and receive tailored financial and money management services due to their net worth.

HNWI individuals may demand and can justify personalized investment management, estate planning, and tax planning services. They generally qualify for separately managed investment accounts rather than mutual funds.

These individuals may get various benefits from financial institutions. For instance, they may qualify for banking, investment, and other financial services with reduced fees, discounts, and special rates, in addition to access to special events and perks.

How do HNWIs invest?

High-net-worth individuals do not necessarily invest according to an entirely different set of financial principles. Diversification, risk management, liquidity, and long-term discipline remain important for every investor; however, the size and structure of their wealth often give HNWIs access to a broader range of opportunities.

HNWIs’ portfolios may need to support a business, preserve family wealth, generate recurring income, fund philanthropic goals, and prepare for the transfer of assets to future generations. Accordingly, investment strategy becomes less about selecting a single high-performing asset and more about building a resilient system of assets that work together.

Many HNWIs hold a core portfolio of traditional investments, including public equities, bonds, cash, and real estate. However, wealthy investors may also allocate part of their capital to private-market opportunities that are less accessible to the average investor. This includes private equity investments in established, non-listed companies; venture capital investments in startups and high-growth businesses; commercial real estate and development projects; hedge funds; and more.

Types of High-Net-Worth Individuals 

HNWIs can be divided into several different categories. Where they fall depends on how much they are worth:

• Sub-HNWI: An individual with more than $100,000 but less than $1 million
• Very-HNWI: An individual whose net worth is at least $1 million
• Mid-Tier HNWI or Mid-Tier Millionaire: An individual whose net worth is between $5 million and $30 million in investable assets.
• Ultra-HNWI: An individual who holds $30 million or more in investable assets and sits at the highest end of the standard HNWI classification framework.

Finally, the wealth of high-net-worth individuals can provide access to specialized investment opportunities, private-banking services, and sophisticated financial structures; however, it brings greater responsibility. Managing substantial wealth requires more than identifying attractive investments; it demands a clear strategy for preserving capital, maintaining liquidity, reducing concentration risk, and preparing for uncertainty.

For HNWIs, the financial journey often changes after wealth has been created. Over time, protecting that wealth becomes just as important as growing it. This often involves diversifying across asset classes and geographies, balancing liquid and long-term investments, and seeking professional support in areas such as estate planning, tax coordination, and family governance.

Ghada Ismail

Saudi Arabia’s long-established relationship with precious metals is entering a new digital phase. As financial technology reshapes the way consumers save, invest, and manage wealth, gold is increasingly moving beyond traditional jewelry markets and physical bullion transactions into digital platforms and banking channels.

The emergence of digital gold services is creating a new intersection between fintech, wealth management, and precious-metals markets. Consumers can increasingly purchase gold digitally, track their holdings, automate savings, and, in some cases, convert digital ownership into physical metal. At the same time, the expansion of these services from fintech startups to major Saudi banks suggests that digital precious-metals investing is evolving from a niche proposition into a broader financial-services category.

The concept behind digital gold is relatively straightforward. Instead of requiring consumers to purchase and physically store a gold bar, digital platforms allow them to acquire ownership of gold while managing their holdings through a mobile application or digital banking platform.

This can lower the traditional barriers associated with precious-metals investment, particularly for consumers who may want to build their holdings gradually rather than make a large one-time purchase.

Startups adopting digital gold trading

GrowK is one example of this model in Saudi Arabia. The platform allows users to save in 24-karat digital gold, with automated savings options that can be structured on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. It also allows users to buy, sell, and monitor their gold holdings digitally.

The significance of such a model goes beyond convenience. By introducing automated and recurring purchases, platforms can transform gold from an asset typically purchased periodically into a digital savings product.

This is where the model begins to resemble fintech.

Rather than simply digitizing the traditional gold-buying process, digital platforms can introduce features that are familiar from modern financial applications, including automated saving, portfolio monitoring, real-time pricing, and fractional ownership.

Banks are validating the model

The development is not limited to startups.

Saudi Arabia’s established banking sector is also incorporating precious metals into its digital financial services, potentially giving the category a much broader consumer reach.

SNB’s Gold Account enables customers to buy and sell investment-grade gold through the bank’s digital channels, including SNB Mobile and AlAhliOnline. The bank states that its gold is 999.9 purity and provides customers with the option of requesting physical gold bars through selected branches.

The model effectively combines digital access with physical ownership. Customers can manage their gold electronically while retaining a pathway to physical bullion.

Al Rajhi Bank’s Gold Wallet follows a similar approach, allowing customers to buy, sell, and store gold digitally while monitoring gold prices and managing their holdings through the bank’s digital ecosystem.

The involvement of major banks is significant because it moves digital gold beyond the realm of specialist investment applications.

When precious metals become integrated into mainstream digital banking, consumers can potentially view gold alongside their other financial products rather than as a separate physical asset requiring a visit to a jeweler or bullion dealer.

The infrastructure opportunity

While consumer-facing applications are attracting attention, another part of the market is developing behind the scenes.

Nexus Global’s Mithqal is designed as infrastructure for banks, fintech companies, wealth managers, and other institutions seeking to offer digital precious-metals products.

The platform provides capabilities related to digital gold accounts, metal wallets, pricing, trading, physical allocation, custody, settlement, and reporting. Its offering also extends beyond gold to other precious metals, including silver and platinum.

This infrastructure layer could become particularly important as demand grows.

Rather than every financial institution building its own technology and operational infrastructure for precious-metals products, platforms such as Mithqal can potentially provide the underlying technology needed to bring these services to market.

This mirrors developments elsewhere in fintech.

Payments infrastructure enabled companies to build digital wallets and payment applications without developing payment rails from scratch. Banking infrastructure has similarly allowed fintech companies to launch financial products without building a complete banking system.

Precious-metals infrastructure could play a comparable role, creating the technological rails for a broader digital bullion ecosystem.

Why gold, and why now?

Saudi Arabia has a particularly strong foundation for this market because gold already occupies an important position in the country’s consumer and investment culture.

The World Gold Council reported that Saudi Arabia’s bar and coin investment demand increased from 15.5 tons in 2024 to 17.5 tons in 2025, representing a 13% increase. Saudi Arabia was also the largest bar and coin investment market in the GCC during 2025.

At the same time, jewelry demand declined. Saudi jewelry consumption fell 10% to 44 tons in 2025, while its value declined 28% to $8.9 billion, according to the World Gold Council.

The shift is important because it suggests that high gold prices may be changing how consumers approach the metal.

Rather than purchasing gold primarily as jewelry, some consumers may increasingly view it through an investment lens.

Digital platforms are well positioned to serve this behavior because they can make smaller purchases more accessible.

The same consumer who may find a large physical gold purchase expensive can potentially accumulate smaller quantities over time.

Silver could expand the opportunity

Gold is likely to remain the primary asset in the digital precious-metals market, but silver could provide the next stage of growth.

Silver has a different investment profile from gold. Alongside its role as a precious metal, it has significant industrial applications, including electronics, solar technology, and manufacturing.

That gives digital platforms an opportunity to move beyond single-asset products toward multi-metal investment portfolios.

A consumer could eventually use one application to allocate a monthly amount between gold and silver, monitor the performance of both assets, and potentially redeem holdings physically.

This would represent a significant evolution from the concept of a digital gold wallet.

It would become a digital precious-metals portfolio, combining the accessibility of fintech with the characteristics of physical commodities.

Trust will determine the winners

Despite the opportunity, digital precious-metals platforms face a fundamental challenge, which is trust.

When a customer sees one gram of gold displayed in an application, they need to know exactly what that balance represents.

Is the gold physically allocated? Where is it stored? Who is responsible for custody? Is the inventory independently verified? Can the customer redeem the gold? What are the transaction spreads, storage fees, and withdrawal costs?

These questions become particularly important as the market expands beyond established banks and into startups and specialist platforms.

Regulatory clarity will also matter.

The distinction between a platform facilitating the purchase and custody of physical precious metals and one offering investment products or regulated capital-market activities can be significant.

For companies operating in this space, regulatory compliance could therefore become a competitive advantage rather than simply a legal requirement.

The strongest platforms will likely be those that combine technology with transparent ownership structures, credible custody arrangements, clear pricing, robust compliance, and reliable physical redemption mechanisms.

Is digital gold the new fintech?

The answer depends on how “new fintech” is defined.

Digital precious metals are unlikely to replace the established pillars of Saudi fintech, such as payments, lending, insurance, and financial infrastructure.

But they could represent something equally important: the next stage of Saudi wealthtech.

The Kingdom’s fintech market is gradually moving beyond simply making financial transactions digital toward helping consumers save, invest, and manage their wealth through technology.

Gold provides an unusual advantage in this transition.

Unlike many emerging financial products, it does not require consumers to understand an entirely new asset. Gold is already familiar. The innovation lies in changing how consumers access, accumulate, manage, and potentially redeem it.

The four Saudi examples illustrate the different layers of this emerging ecosystem. Together, they suggest that digital precious metals are developing into something broader than a collection of investment apps.

The next opportunity could be the creation of a fully integrated digital commodities ecosystem in which consumers can save in gold, diversify into silver, automate purchases, monitor portfolios, and access physical assets through a single digital experience.

For Saudi Arabia, the opportunity is particularly compelling because the digital future is being built around an asset with a very long history.

Gold may be one of the oldest stores of wealth, but the way Saudi consumers own it could be entering a distinctly digital era.

By: Christian Reilly, Field CTO EMEA at Cloudflare

Artificial intelligence has rapidly moved from experimentation to strategic priority. Across the Middle East and Africa, governments, financial institutions, telecommunications providers, and enterprises are investing heavily in AI to improve efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and unlock new growth opportunities. From national AI strategies and smart city initiatives to AI-powered customer service and operational automation, organizations are increasingly viewing AI as a critical driver of competitiveness.

Yet despite the enthusiasm and investment surrounding AI, many initiatives fail to deliver meaningful business outcomes. While pilot projects often demonstrate promising results, organizations frequently struggle to move beyond proof-of-concepts and scale AI across the enterprise. The challenge is rarely a shortage of data, talent, or ambition. More often, the real obstacle lies in the technology environment supporting these initiatives.

Legacy applications, fragmented infrastructure, and accumulated technical debt are preventing many organizations from realizing the full value of AI.

The Foundation Problem Most AI Strategies Overlook

Much of the conversation around AI focuses on models, algorithms, and use cases. However, AI success depends just as much on the underlying technology foundation as it does on the AI itself.

AI workloads require fast access to data, scalable infrastructure, seamless connectivity between applications, and the ability to process information in real time. Many existing enterprise environments were not designed for these requirements. Instead, they were built to support traditional business applications, often through architectures that have evolved over many years.

As organizations attempt to integrate AI into these environments, they encounter challenges that slow progress and increase costs. What begins as an innovative AI initiative can quickly become a complex modernization project involving application integration, infrastructure upgrades, security enhancements, and data transformation.

This issue is particularly relevant in the Middle East and Africa, where many organizations are simultaneously pursuing ambitious digital transformation goals while managing long-established technology environments. While modernization efforts have accelerated significantly in recent years, critical business processes often continue to depend on legacy systems that were never designed to support AI-driven operations.

When Technical Debt Becomes a Business Challenge

Technical debt has traditionally been viewed as an IT concern. In today's AI-driven economy, it has become a strategic business challenge.

Many technology teams spend considerable time maintaining aging applications, resolving system issues, and managing complex integrations. These activities consume resources that could otherwise be focused on innovation and AI deployment.

The result is what many organizations are beginning to experience as an innovation tax. Instead of investing time in creating new AI-enabled services, teams are forced to devote significant effort to making existing systems work together.

As AI initiatives expand, this burden grows. New applications introduce additional data requirements, integration points, security controls, and operational complexity. Without a clear modernization strategy, organizations risk creating even more fragmented environments that become increasingly difficult to manage.

The organizations achieving the greatest returns from AI are often not those spending the most on technology. They are the ones that have simplified their environments and created a foundation capable of supporting innovation at scale.

Data Silos Continue to Hold Back AI Progress

AI depends on access to high-quality, connected, and consistent data. Unfortunately, this remains one of the biggest challenges facing many organizations.

Over time, businesses often accumulate multiple applications, platforms, and databases that operate independently of one another. Information becomes trapped within departmental systems, creating data silos that limit visibility and reduce operational efficiency.

For AI initiatives, these silos create significant obstacles. Models require access to reliable information from across the organization to deliver meaningful insights and accurate outcomes. When data is fragmented, incomplete, or inconsistent, AI performance suffers.

This challenge is becoming increasingly important as organizations across the Middle East and Africa continue expanding their digital ecosystems. Cloud platforms, SaaS applications, edge environments, and on-premises systems must work together seamlessly to support modern business operations.

Organizations that successfully connect these environments gain a significant advantage. They can move data more efficiently, accelerate AI deployment, and generate value faster than competitors operating within fragmented infrastructures.

Security Must Be Built Into AI From the Beginning

As organizations scale AI adoption, cybersecurity becomes increasingly important.

AI systems often process sensitive business information and interact with multiple users, applications, and data sources. This expanded connectivity creates new risks that organizations must address proactively.

Many legacy architectures were developed before modern security frameworks such as Zero Trust became widely adopted. As a result, they often struggle to provide the visibility, control, and protection required for today's AI-powered environments.

Security therefore cannot be treated as an afterthought. It must be embedded throughout the AI lifecycle, from development and deployment to operations and governance.

Organizations that integrate security into their architecture from the outset are better positioned to scale AI safely and confidently. Those that attempt to retrofit security controls later often encounter delays, increased costs, and unnecessary risk.

Building a Platform for Long-Term AI Success

Organizations that successfully scale AI tend to share several characteristics. They focus on simplifying complexity, consolidating fragmented environments, and modernizing their infrastructure in parallel with their AI initiatives.

Cloud-native and API-first architectures have become increasingly important because they provide the flexibility, scalability, and connectivity required for modern AI workloads. Integrated platforms also help eliminate operational silos, allowing development, operations, security, and business teams to work from a shared foundation.

Most importantly, successful organizations recognize that AI is not a standalone technology project. It is part of a broader application and business strategy.

The future of AI in the Middle East and Africa will be shaped not only by the sophistication of AI models but by the strength of the digital foundations that support them. Organizations that modernize their infrastructure, reduce complexity, strengthen security, and connect their data environments will be best positioned to transform AI investments into measurable business value.

For many organizations, the path to successful AI adoption does not begin with the model. It begins with the platform on which that model runs.

Noha Gad 

In an era where public sector efficiency and citizen-centric service delivery are primary benchmarks of national progress, digital government has emerged as a critical pillar of administrative modernization. Saudi Arabia stands as a regional leader in this domain, having secured the top position in the Middle East and North Africa in the Government Electronic and Mobile Services (GEMS) Maturity Index for 2025 for the fourth consecutive year, as issued by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). According to the report, the Kingdom achieved a maturity rate of 99% in the overall index assessments, reflecting the sustained maturity of Saudi Arabia’s digital government and its continued progress at the regional level.

The index assessed the maturity of 100 priority government services delivered to individuals and businesses through digital platforms and smart applications, across three sub-indicators. Saudi Arabia achieved 100% in the Service Availability Development indicator, 99% in the Service Usage and User Satisfaction indicator, and 100% in the Public Outreach indicator.

This consistent performance reflects the Kingdom's strategic vision to develop an integrated digital government ecosystem that prioritizes beneficiaries, enhances the competitiveness of the national economy, and improves government performance efficiency through a sustainable approach. Building on this foundational success, the Kingdom is now channeling its digital capabilities into sector-specific transformations—from tourism and healthcare to financial services and human resources—each presenting distinct opportunities and challenges that test the scalability and resilience of the national digital government framework.

The digital government transformation in Saudi Arabia is supported by more than a collection of individual websites and mobile applications. It is built on an integrated national ecosystem that combines unified access points, digital identity, regulatory standards, shared infrastructure, data governance and coordination between government entities. This structure allows ministries and public agencies to deliver services through connected channels rather than operating as isolated digital departments.

The Digital Government Authority (DGA) is the entity responsible for regulating digital government activities. Established in 2021, the authority focuses on several functions, including preparing the national digital government strategy; developing technical standards for government digital transformation models; supervising governance of the government digital cloud activities and clouds related to digital government; building national capacities specialized in digital government, along with other responsibilities. It launched the Digital Government Investment and Procurement Center (SADAF) in 2022 to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the private sector’s participation in digital government projects. SADAF was established to encourage local and foreign investment in digital government, enhance the investment and efficiency of government spending in the field of digital government, improve digital budget planning, and avoid duplication of projects. 

Further, the authority plays a pivotal role in achieving the goals of the National Digital Government Strategy, which sets an ambitious goal that, by 2030, the government will provide world-class digital services that effectively and efficiently meet citizens’ needs. Doing so, the strategy is centered on three key implementation pillars:

• Government-as-a-platform. The DGA promotes a government-as-a-platform model in which shared digital infrastructure, data, and services are provided as reusable components that individual government entities can consume and build upon. This approach reduces duplication, improves consistency, and accelerates the development of new digital services by enabling agencies to leverage common capabilities rather than building from scratch.
• High maturity levels. The Kingdom continuously evaluates government platforms and services via metrics such as the Digital Experience Maturity Index to maintain high maturity levels. This could enhance beneficiary satisfaction, user experience, and tool optimization.
• Institutional coordination. Integrating data across government entities is a critical dimension of DGA’s work, as it enables transactions that previously required citizens to provide the same information to multiple agencies. The development of government data sharing frameworks, standardized data formats, and interoperability protocols enables services to be delivered proactively based on information the government already holds.

Key applications and services

The Saudi digital government ecosystem becomes most visible through the applications and websites that individuals, businesses, residents and visitors use in their daily interactions with public institutions. Clearest examples of this transformation can be found in identity, residency, and public-administration service platforms Absher and Nafath.

Operated by the Ministry of Interior with DGA oversight of standards and interoperability, Absher provides a comprehensive digital interface for citizen and resident interactions with government services. It enables users to manage identity documents, process visa and immigration transactions, handle traffic services, and access a wide range of government services that previously required in-person visits to multiple government offices. The platform’s scope has been progressively expanded to encompass services from additional government entities, creating an increasingly comprehensive single point of access for government interactions.

Meanwhile, Nafath, the national digital identity platform, provides the authentication infrastructure that underpins secure access to government and private sector digital services. It enables citizens and residents to verify their identity through a mobile application, providing the trust layer necessary for high-value digital transactions including financial services, government permits, and legal transactions.

Tourism: Digitizing the Visitor Journey

The tourism sector ecosystem demonstrates how digital government services are helping simplify the visitor journey, from applying for a visa and planning an itinerary to booking accommodation, obtaining permits, and accessing services during the visit.

The official Saudi eVisa portal is one of the most visible examples of the digital transformation in the tourism sector. It allows eligible international visitors to apply online, complete the required information, pay the relevant fees, and receive their tourist visa electronically without visiting a Saudi embassy in person. The visa service is also evolving through the KSA Visa platform, the unified national visa platform launched by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The platform combines visa-related services and connects more than 30 government and private entities, covering tourism, business, Hajj, Umrah and other types of entry visas.

Another key example is Nusuk, the integrated platform for pilgrims and visitors. Overseen by the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah, it was developed to help pilgrims and visitors plan and manage their journeys to Makkah, Madinah, and other destinations connected to the pilgrimage experience.

The platform can support several stages of visitors’ journeys, including: applying for or obtaining an electronic visa; planning Umrah visits; booking accommodation, transport, and travel packages; obtaining permits and reservations; booking visits to Al-Rawdah Al-Sharifah; accessing guidance, maps, and information about services; communicating with authorized service providers; and completing payments for selected services.

Advancing healthcare through digital health services

Healthcare is one of the most important areas where Saudi Arabia is using digital platforms to simplify access to medical services, connect patients with healthcare providers, improve preventive care, and support the exchange of health information between institutions. This transformation extends across several stages of the healthcare journey, enabling patients to book appointments, access medical records, review prescriptions, receive virtual consultations, and obtain health information through digital channels. At the institutional level, healthcare providers can use connected systems to manage patient data, coordinate referrals, and deliver specialized services remotely.

The Sehhaty platform is a clear example. Provided by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health, the platform brings together a range of health services for individuals and families. This includes arranging medical appointments, selecting a healthcare center and available appointment time; accessing and reviewing medical records, laboratory results, and insurance approvals; and accessing certain virtual healthcare services.

This model improves convenience for patients while helping healthcare providers manage demand more efficiently. It can also reduce missed appointments by allowing users to receive reminders and make changes without contacting a healthcare facility directly.

Digitizing financial services and government transactions

Unlike digital services in other sectors, financial platforms often connect several groups at the same time: government entities, businesses, employees, citizens, residents, and service providers. Digitizing public finance is designed to improve the speed, transparency, and efficiency of government transactions. It covers areas such as budgeting, procurement, government payments, public revenues, employee entitlements, and the electronic payment of government fees. Together, these services help replace paper-based procedures with integrated digital processes that can be monitored and managed more effectively.

The Etimad platform is the most prominent example of digital government in the Saudi financial sector. It provides electronic services to government entities, private-sector companies, and individuals. The platform supports several major areas of public finance, including government budgeting and financial planning, financial claims and invoices, government payments, and employee financial entitlements.

Another example is the e-invoicing system Esal, one of the national systems owned by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), providing an integrated solution for business sector invoices in Saudi Arabia. It connects suppliers with buyers and covers the invoice workflow from its presentation to its payment and reconciliation services.​

Esal provides several advantages that meet the needs of the business sector. These include processing multiple forms of invoices, reviewing a summary of beneficiary invoices, automatic reconciliation, and payment as a group, as well as reports on invoices and payments.

Finally, the wide variety of digital government applications and services across different sectors reflects the breadth of Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation and the Kingdom’s excellence in delivering integrated digital government services. These examples demonstrate that the Saudi digital government model extends beyond transferring traditional procedures to websites and mobile applications, relying on a broader ecosystem that combines digital identity, shared infrastructure, data exchange, regulatory standards and institutional coordination. As the Kingdom advances toward the objectives of the National Digital Government Strategy 2030, its success will depend on maintaining service quality, strengthening cybersecurity and data protection, improving interoperability and ensuring digital inclusion. By continuing to develop a proactive and connected government, Saudi Arabia is positioning digital government not only as a tool for administrative modernization, but also as a foundation for economic competitiveness, social development and the broader ambitions of Saudi Vision 2030.

Ghada Ismail

Saudi Arabia's rise as a hub for institutional capital has become hard to ignore, and few are better placed to explain why than the people structuring the deals themselves. Behind the headlines about giga-projects and sovereign wealth lies a quieter shift in how founders raise money, how investors assess risk, and which sectors are actually ready for capital. We spoke with Sayed A., Chief Business Officer of Graystone Capital's Dubai office, who walked us through what's genuinely changed for founders and investors in the Kingdom, the missteps that still catch fundraisers off guard, the financing routes too often overlooked in favor of venture capital, and where the smart money is heading as the market matures toward 2030.

 1. Graystone Capital has identified Saudi Arabia as one of its strategic markets. What makes the Kingdom particularly attractive for institutional investors today? 

A few numbers tell the story better than any pitch deck could. According to UNCTAD's World Investment Report 2026, Saudi Arabia climbed to 13th place globally for FDI inflows in 2025, up from 17th the year before, with net inflows of $32.6 billion, a jump of roughly 53% year-on-year. That is not a one-off spike; it is the compounding effect of reforms that have been building for several years now. 

The most consequential of these, in our view, is the new Investment Law that came into force in February 2025, replacing legislation that had governed foreign investment since 2000. It puts local and foreign investors on genuinely equal footing, extends protections against expropriation, and has accelerated the shift toward 100% foreign ownership across a widening list of sectors. Combine that with a sovereign credit profile now rated in the A-category across Moody's, Fitch and S&P, a public investment pipeline north of $1 trillion tied to the giga-projects, and a domestic consumer market of over 36 million people with strong disposable income, and you have a market that offers both scale and increasingly predictable rules of engagement. For institutional capital, that combination of scale, reform, and macro stability is rare, and it's precisely why we've prioritized the Kingdom. 

2. What differentiates Saudi founders from entrepreneurs in other GCC markets when raising capital? 

Saudi founders today are raising in a market that has genuinely pulled ahead of its neighbors. MAGNiTT's FY2025 data shows Saudi Arabia captured $1.72 billion in venture funding across 257 deals, the highest figure and deal count ever recorded by a single country in the MENA region, and enough to make the Kingdom the top-ranked VC market regionally for the third consecutive year. That changes founder behavior. Where entrepreneurs elsewhere in the Gulf often have to court capital from Dubai, London or Riyadh simultaneously, Saudi founders increasingly have deep local pools to draw from first, sovereign-backed vehicles like SVC and Sanabil, family offices such as Olayan and Alturki, and homegrown institutional funds like STV and Raed. 

The other distinguishing factor is proximity to government-anchored demand. A Saudi founder building in logistics, healthtech, or industrial software isn't just pitching an addressable market; they are often pitching direct alignment with a named Vision 2030 program, a giga-project procurement pipeline, or a PIF portfolio company that could become a first customer. That gives Saudi founders a credibility shortcut in the room that founders in more mature, less state-directed ecosystems don't always have, though it also means investors here scrutinize a founder's actual government and enterprise relationships more closely than they might elsewhere. 

3. Many founders believe securing funding is simply about having a great idea. From your experience, what are the biggest reasons startups fail to raise capital? 

The idea is rarely the problem. In our experience arranging financing across the region, the founders who struggle almost always stumble on three things: unclear capital structure, weak financial discipline, and a mismatch between what they're asking for and what stage they're actually at. 

On capital structure, we regularly see founders who haven't thought through their cap table until an investor asks about it in the room, prior friends-and-family rounds with vague terms, undocumented related-party loans, or founder equity splits that don't survive due diligence. On financial discipline, even at seed and Series A stage, investors now expect management accounts that reconcile, not back-of-envelope spreadsheets; the bar has risen noticeably as the Saudi market has matured and institutional money has entered. And on stage mismatch, we still see founders pitching growth-stage valuations off pre-revenue traction, which immediately signals to a sophisticated investor that the founder doesn't yet understand how their own business will be underwritten. None of these are about the idea; they're about whether the business is investment-ready, which is a very different, and fixable, problem. 

4. What common valuation mistakes do founders make during fundraising? 

The most common mistake is anchoring a valuation to a regional headline round rather than to the founder's own unit economics. Saudi Arabia's 2025 VC market saw funding rise 145% year-on-year, and mega deals like Tabby and Ninja understandably get attention, but those are outliers, not benchmarks, and founders who price their own seed or Series A round off a mega-deal multiple usually find the market pushes back hard, or worse, get a term sheet loaded with structure (liquidation preferences, ratchets) that quietly claws back the headline number. 

The second mistake is treating valuation as a single negotiation rather than a signal that carries into the next round. We've seen founders take an aggressive valuation from a less discerning investor, only to face a painful down-round eighteen months later because growth couldn't catch up to the number. And the third, more technical mistake, is founders not distinguishing between pre-money and post-money terms clearly enough in the term sheet, which sounds basic, but in a market where deal velocity has increased sharply, we still see it trip up first-time founders regularly. 

5. Venture capital often dominates the startup scene, but your business covers a much broader range of financing solutions. What funding options are Saudi founders overlooking? 

Venture capital gets the headlines, but it's genuinely the wrong tool for a large share of the businesses we speak with. A founder running an asset-light logistics or fulfilment operation, for instance, is often better served by working capital or trade finance than by giving up equity to fund inventory or fleet expansion, particularly now that Saudi ports are handling record throughput and warehousing demand is outpacing supply. Similarly, businesses generating predictable card or POS receivables can access overdraft or receivables-based financing well before they'd qualify for a meaningful equity round, and without diluting the cap table for what is fundamentally working capital, not growth capital. 

At the other end of the spectrum, founders scaling into capital-intensive infrastructure, a data center build, a healthcare facility, an industrial plant tied to one of the localization programs should be thinking about project finance and structured debt long before they think about a growth equity round, because the risk-return profile of that kind of asset is genuinely better suited to debt investors than to venture funds. The Saudi fintech sector alone has grown from roughly 82 companies in 2020 toward a 2030 target of 525, and financing companies licensed by SAMA have expanded accordingly, which tells you the debt and structured finance infrastructure to support this kind of financing now actually exists locally. Founders who only ever speak to VCs are leaving a lot of that infrastructure unused. 

6. How important are cross-border partnerships in today's fundraising environment? 

Increasingly central, and for a very practical reason: Saudi Arabia's own capital base, while deep, is still building the full stack of expertise in some specialized verticals, deep tech, advanced manufacturing finance, certain climate technologies, where regional and international partners bring both capital and domain experience. We've also seen this play out at the sovereign level: HUMAIN, the PIF-backed AI company, has structured its own scale-up through partnerships with Nvidia, AMD, AWS and others rather than trying to build every layer domestically, and that same logic increasingly applies to how founders should think about their own cap tables. 

There's also a market-access dimension. A Saudi startup with a UAE, Egyptian, or Gulf-wide co-investor on its cap table typically finds it easier to expand into those markets, because that investor brings relationships and regulatory familiarity the founder doesn't have to build from scratch. For international investors, meanwhile, a credible local partner, someone who understands the specific licensing environment, the difference between operating from Riyadh versus a special economic zone, or how a giga-project tender actually works, meaningfully de-risks their entry. We see this constantly in our own work: cross-border deals close faster and on better terms when there's a trusted party on the ground on both sides of the table. 

7. What opportunities do you see in sectors such as AI, fintech, logistics, climate tech, healthcare, and industrial technology? 

Each of these is moving at a genuinely different pace, so it's worth taking them individually. AI is the most capital-intensive story in the Kingdom right now; HUMAIN alone has committed to a $100 billion technology investment program and is targeting up to 6.6 gigawatts of AI data center capacity by 2034, with partnerships already signed with Nvidia, AMD, AWS, Qualcomm and Cisco. That creates a large downstream opportunity for firms in power infrastructure, cooling technology, and enterprise AI applications layered on top of that compute base. 

Fintech remains the most mature vertical for founders and investors alike; SAMA-licensed finance companies have grown into the sixties, electronic payments now account for roughly 85% of retail transactions, and the central bank issued its first live open banking licenses in March 2026, which genuinely opens a new product category. Logistics is being reshaped by necessity as much as ambition: the $7 billion Landbridge rail project and continued Red Sea port investment are direct responses to regional shipping disruption, and cold chain and warehousing remain visibly underserved relative to demand. Healthcare is one of the largest reform stories in the Kingdom; the government is targeting private-sector contribution of up to 65% by 2030, with 290 hospitals and 2,300 primary care centers earmarked for privatization, which is a multi-decade PPP and asset-transfer opportunity. Climate tech and industrial technology are earlier-stage but tied directly to giga-project execution; NEOM, green hydrogen, and the localization of industrial manufacturing under the National Industrial Strategy all need capital and technology partners now, not in five years. 

8. What's one misconception international investors still have about Saudi Arabia? 

That it's a single, government-directed market where private capital plays a supporting role to sovereign wealth. That was arguably a fairer characterization five years ago; it isn't today. MAGNiTT's data on the 2025 Saudi VC market shows the investor base reaching its broadest and most international composition to date, and non-mega deals, the smaller, more genuinely private-market transactions, grew meaningfully alongside the headline rounds, which tells you liquidity is deepening across the stack, not just concentrating at the top. 

The other version of this misconception is timing risk, the assumption that Vision 2030 is a long-dated bet that won't pay off for years. In practice, we're already past the point where this is purely aspirational: fintech alone has gone from fewer than thirty licensed companies before 2020 to over sixty finance companies today, non-cash transactions hit their 70% target ahead of schedule, and the Kingdom posted a record year for both FDI and venture funding in the same twelve-month period. Investors who are still waiting for a clearer signal to enter are, in our assessment, already behind the founders and funds who moved two or three years ago. 

9. How do you see Saudi Arabia's investment ecosystem evolving by 2030? 

Three shifts stand out to us. First, we expect the venture and private capital base to keep localizing; Saudi-headquartered funds, family offices and sovereign vehicles already anchor most early and growth-stage rounds, and as more Saudi fund managers get their CMA licenses, that trend should deepen further rather than reverse. Second, we expect financing to diversify well beyond equity: the government's own $100 billion annual FDI target for 2030, alongside a healthcare PPP pipeline that includes a further $16.5 billion in targeted public-private partnerships and the Landbridge and port investments in logistics, all point toward debt, project finance and structured capital playing a much larger role in the ecosystem than they do today, which is exactly the space we operate in. 

Third, and most structurally significant, is that Saudi Arabia is positioning itself for reclassification onto deeper global capital pools, from MSCI frontier status toward more emerging and eventually developed-market benchmarks, mirroring the trajectory the broader GCC has been on. If the current pace of reform, privatization and sector diversification holds, by 2030 the more interesting question won't be whether international investors are looking at Saudi Arabia, but whether they got in early enough. 

Kholoud Hussein

For decades, the Saudi economy was defined by scale. Large oil companies, government spending and mega-projects shaped the Kingdom’s economic landscape, while small and medium-sized enterprises remained an important but comparatively secondary component of the private sector.

That equation is changing.

Across Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and the Kingdom’s emerging economic centers, a new generation of entrepreneurs is building businesses that are increasingly embedded in the infrastructure of the Saudi economy. They are developing payment systems, digitizing commerce, creating logistics networks, transforming healthcare delivery, developing artificial-intelligence applications, supporting tourism and entertainment, and providing technology to businesses that previously had limited access to sophisticated digital services.

The significance of this transformation goes well beyond the number of startups being created. Saudi Arabia is gradually building an entrepreneurial economy in which SMEs are becoming employers, technology providers, suppliers, exporters and, increasingly, investment assets in their own right.

By the end of the third quarter of 2025, the Kingdom had 1.7 million commercial registrations, while SMEs employed more than 8.4 million people, according to Monsha’at. The scale of the business base is particularly notable when compared with the roughly 429,000 SMEs recorded in 2016, according to data cited in a 2026 Saudi British Bank analysis of the National Transformation Program.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia has emerged as the Middle East and North Africa’s leading venture-capital market. Saudi startups attracted a record $1.72 billion across 257 transactions in 2025, marking a 145% increase in funding from the previous year and the highest level ever recorded for a single MENA market, according to MAGNiTT data sponsored by Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC).

Those numbers point to a profound shift: the Kingdom is no longer simply trying to encourage people to establish businesses. It is attempting to create companies capable of scaling, attracting institutional capital, generating employment, solving structural economic gaps and eventually becoming major economic actors.

From Vision 2030 beneficiaries to economic contributors

The transformation of the SME sector has been embedded in Saudi Arabia’s economic strategy from the beginning of Vision 2030.

Monsha’at, established in 2016 to regulate, support and develop the SME sector, has been tasked with helping raise SMEs’ contribution to GDP from around 20% to 35% by 2030. The authority identifies three structural challenges—human capabilities, government bureaucracy and access to financing—as central issues that need to be addressed if smaller businesses are to become a larger force in the economy.

The target is important because it changes the definition of economic diversification.

Diversification is not simply about replacing one large source of national income with another. A genuinely diversified economy requires thousands of businesses operating across different industries, sizes and geographies. It requires suppliers supporting larger companies, technology businesses serving traditional industries, consumer companies creating new demand, and entrepreneurs transforming previously fragmented markets.

That is where SMEs become particularly important.

Large companies can invest billions of riyals in a new industrial facility or infrastructure project, but SMEs create the ecosystem around those investments. They supply services, develop specialized technologies, provide logistics, recruit talent, build software and create new business models.

In other words, the economic value of SMEs is not limited to what they produce themselves; it also lies in what they enable other companies to produce.

This multiplier effect is becoming increasingly visible in Saudi Arabia.

Building an ecosystem around entrepreneurs

Saudi Arabia's rise as a startup hub has not been driven by venture capital alone. The Kingdom has spent years building a support architecture designed to address the practical barriers that can prevent startups from reaching scale.

Monsha’at’s Business Accelerators program provides startups with workspaces, consultancy, training, financial grants and access to investor networks, with programs designed to accelerate business development over periods of three to six months.

That support has also expanded beyond technology.

Monsha’at’s Dates Business Accelerator, for example, targets the entire dates value chain—from cultivation and harvesting to processing, packaging, marketing and sales. The program has recruited more than 175 startups, delivered more than 30 workshops and programs, facilitated more than 115 deals and partnerships, and provided more than 1,000 consulting hours.

The message is significant: Saudi Arabia is not attempting to build a startup ecosystem limited to fintech and mobile applications. It is increasingly trying to use entrepreneurship to modernize traditional sectors as well.

That approach is visible in tourism, healthcare, logistics, education, entertainment, agriculture and pilgrimage services.

In October 2025, Monsha’at launched a dedicated Hajj and Umrah entrepreneurship track designed to help entrepreneurs identify opportunities in pilgrim services and develop innovative solutions to improve the visitor experience.

The approach effectively turns some of the Kingdom’s largest economic transformation programs into markets for entrepreneurs.

A new tourism destination creates demand for booking platforms, hospitality technology, transportation solutions, event companies, food businesses and digital services. Expanding healthcare infrastructure creates demand for healthtech companies and specialized service providers. Growing logistics activity creates opportunities for supply-chain technology, last-mile delivery and warehouse solutions.

The result is a powerful relationship between mega-project investment and SME formation.

Financing is becoming less of a bottleneck

For many years, financing was one of the biggest constraints facing Saudi SMEs. The problem was not necessarily a shortage of business ideas; it was the difficulty of converting those ideas into companies capable of surviving and scaling.

The financial ecosystem has changed substantially.

SVC, established in 2018, was created specifically to stimulate financing for startups and SMEs from the pre-seed stage through pre-IPO. Its investment model includes venture-capital funds, private equity, venture debt and private credit, alongside direct investments.

By the first half of 2025, SVC had backed 59 private-capital funds that supported more than 900 startups and SMEs.

The effect is broader than the capital committed by SVC itself. The organization’s role is increasingly that of a catalyst, helping attract private and institutional investors into the market and reducing some of the risk associated with investing in younger businesses.

The acceleration became particularly visible in 2025.

Saudi Arabia deployed $860 million in venture capital during the first six months of 2025, more than the entire amount invested during 2024. The number of transactions reached 114, up 31% year-on-year. E-commerce accounted for 36% of capital deployed, while fintech led by number of deals with 30 transactions.

By the end of the year, the market had reached the $1.72 billion record.

That trajectory suggests that the Kingdom's challenge is gradually changing. The question is no longer simply whether entrepreneurs can find capital. It is whether the ecosystem can produce enough investment-ready companies with sustainable revenues and regional or global growth potential to absorb the increasing pool of capital.

The startups filling the gaps

The strongest argument for the economic importance of Saudi startups comes from the problems they are solving.

Fintech is perhaps the clearest example.

Companies such as Tamara emerged from a gap between rapidly changing consumer behavior and the traditional financial system. What began as a buy-now-pay-later platform evolved into a broader financial-services business serving consumers and merchants.

In February 2025, Tamara raised $160 million in Series E financing at a valuation of $3.3 billion, demonstrating the scale of value that Saudi-born financial technology companies can create.

The company's growth is important not simply because of its valuation. It demonstrates how a startup can develop from solving a relatively narrow consumer problem into building financial infrastructure around a much larger ecosystem of merchants and customers.

The same logic applies to Lean Technologies, which has focused on financial infrastructure rather than consumer lending.

Lean provides open-banking and financial-data infrastructure that enables fintech companies and businesses to connect with bank accounts and build financial services more efficiently. Its development reflects a broader trend: Saudi startups are increasingly building the plumbing underneath the digital economy, rather than simply creating consumer-facing applications.

That distinction matters.

An application may have thousands or millions of users. Infrastructure companies can potentially enable thousands of other businesses to serve millions of users.

The economic multiplier can therefore be much larger.

The rise of B2B startups

Another major opportunity is emerging in business-to-business commerce.

Saudi Arabia's SME economy is large and increasingly sophisticated, but smaller businesses have historically faced challenges in procurement, inventory management, working capital, logistics and access to large suppliers.

This has created opportunities for B2B platforms.

Saudi startup Sary, for example, built its business around digitizing procurement and connecting businesses with suppliers. Its subsequent combination with ShopUp created SILQ Group, with the combined business raising $110 million from investors including Valar Ventures and Sanabil Investments.

The importance of companies such as Sary is not simply their own growth. B2B platforms can make thousands of smaller companies more efficient by lowering procurement costs, improving access to suppliers and bringing previously fragmented transactions onto digital platforms.

That creates another multiplier effect.

The startup becomes an economic intermediary, while its customers become more productive.

This is precisely the type of entrepreneurship that can accelerate SME productivity and help the wider private sector become more competitive.

Saudi Arabia becomes a magnet for international capital

Perhaps the most important signal that Saudi Arabia has become a genuine startup hub is the behavior of foreign investors.

International capital is increasingly entering the Kingdom not simply because of government incentives, but because investors see a combination of market size, high digital adoption, strong consumer spending, government-backed transformation programs and a growing pipeline of scalable companies.

In 2025, Saudi Arabia accounted for the largest share of venture capital investment in MENA, with international investors becoming an increasingly important part of the funding landscape. MAGNiTT data showed that the Kingdom attracted $1.72 billion across 257 deals, reinforcing its position as the region’s largest VC market for the third consecutive year.

The significance of this capital extends beyond individual funding rounds.

International investors bring networks, technology, management expertise and access to overseas markets. Their involvement can help Saudi startups move from being domestic businesses to regional companies.

That transition could become one of the defining features of the next stage of the ecosystem.

Saudi Arabia is a large market on its own, but the real opportunity for many startups lies in using the Kingdom as a launchpad into the broader GCC, MENA and, for selected technology businesses, global markets.

The government is actively encouraging this direction. In late 2025, Monsha’at took Saudi startups to international technology events including Slush in Helsinki and Web Summit Lisbon, connecting entrepreneurs with international investors, partners and innovation ecosystems.

This represents a shift in policy ambition—from bringing capital to Saudi Arabia to helping Saudi companies reach capital and customers abroad.

Artificial intelligence could redefine the next generation

If fintech and e-commerce dominated much of the Kingdom’s early startup-growth story, artificial intelligence could define its next phase.

Saudi Arabia is increasingly trying to establish itself as an AI market, infrastructure hub and development center simultaneously.

The country's startup-support infrastructure is adapting accordingly. In June 2026, Monsha’at announced the graduation of 33 AI startups from the first cohort of its AI incubator program, developed in partnership with the National Technology Development Program.

The startups operated across eight areas, including enterprise solutions, healthcare, tourism and culture, fintech, infrastructure and logistics, e-commerce and education.

This is important because AI is not being treated as an isolated technology sector. Instead, it is being positioned as a horizontal technology capable of transforming almost every part of the SME economy.

A logistics startup can use AI to optimize routes. A healthtech company can use it for diagnostics or administrative automation. A financial company can use it for fraud detection and credit assessment. A tourism business can use it for personalization and demand forecasting.

That creates the possibility of a second-order effect: AI startups do not simply become companies themselves; they can increase the productivity of thousands of other companies.

The challenge now is scaling, not starting

Saudi Arabia has made remarkable progress in creating businesses and attracting capital. But the next stage will be more difficult.

Creating a startup is relatively straightforward compared with turning it into a company capable of generating sustainable profits, employing hundreds or thousands of people, expanding internationally and returning capital to investors.

This is where the Kingdom's ecosystem will be tested.

The record $1.72 billion in venture capital investment in 2025 is impressive, but funding is not an end in itself. Capital must eventually translate into revenue, productivity, employment, exports and returns.

There are encouraging signs.

A joint 2026 report by Endeavor Saudi Arabia and SVC found that 77% of surveyed founders are considering an IPO, while 91% of those considering an IPO prefer to list on the Saudi Exchange, Tadawul. The report points to an emerging pipeline of venture-backed companies moving toward public markets.

That could prove transformative.

A mature startup ecosystem requires exits. Successful IPOs and acquisitions return money to investors, create experienced entrepreneurs and executives, generate new pools of capital, and demonstrate to the next generation of founders that building a high-growth company can produce significant economic value.

Endeavor's analysis estimates a potential pipeline of four to 12 additional venture-backed IPOs in Saudi Arabia under different scenarios. If only half of the potential listings materialize, the market capitalization represented by venture-backed public companies could increase significantly.

This could mark the beginning of a new cycle in which Saudi capital markets increasingly become part of the startup ecosystem rather than remaining a destination only for mature corporations.

Where will the next investment wave go?

The investment opportunity is also becoming broader. While fintech remains one of the strongest sectors, Saudi venture investment is increasingly flowing toward e-commerce, AI, logistics, healthcare, education, tourism and other sectors aligned with the Kingdom's diversification strategy.

In the first half of 2025, e-commerce attracted the largest share of venture capital by value, while fintech recorded the highest number of transactions.

Future capital is likely to become increasingly concentrated around businesses capable of demonstrating three characteristics: real demand, scalable economics and strategic relevance.

Artificial intelligence and deep technology are particularly well positioned. Healthcare and healthtech are likely to benefit from demographic and infrastructure changes. Tourism and entertainment will continue to create new markets as visitor numbers and domestic consumption expand. Logistics and industrial technology will benefit from the Kingdom's ambition to become a global trade and supply-chain hub.

Meanwhile, growth-stage companies are likely to attract more private equity and structured capital as they move beyond the startup phase.

The direction is already visible. SVC has expanded beyond traditional venture capital into private equity, venture debt and private credit, reflecting the growing need for financing options across different stages of company development.

This diversification of financing is critical.

A company should not have to rely on equity funding at every stage of its life. As Saudi businesses mature, debt, growth equity, private equity and eventually public markets can provide alternative sources of capital.

The next economic engine will be measured by productivity

Saudi Arabia's SME revolution should therefore not be measured only by the number of startups established or billions of dollars raised. The more important question is what these companies are doing to the structure of the economy. Are they making businesses more productive? Are they reducing transaction costs? Are they creating skilled jobs? Are they bringing women and young people into entrepreneurship? Are they developing intellectual property? Are they creating companies capable of exporting Saudi technology and services? And, ultimately, are they producing sustainable financial returns?

There are already signs of progress.

The Kingdom's entrepreneurial activity rate rose from 12.1% in 2018 to 28.9% in 2025, while entrepreneurial intentions increased from 26.8% to 48.5%, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2025–2026 report. Saudi Arabia ranked third globally in the National Entrepreneurship Context Index and led high-income economies in entrepreneurial finance.

Those figures reveal something deeper than a rise in company registrations. They indicate a change in economic culture.

Entrepreneurship is becoming a mainstream economic pathway rather than a niche activity. Young Saudis are increasingly seeing company-building as a career, while international founders and investors are viewing the Kingdom as a market in which companies can be built at scale.

That cultural shift may ultimately prove as important as the financial incentives.

From ecosystem to economic force

Saudi Arabia's SME sector has reached an inflection point. The Kingdom now has the scale of businesses, capital, institutional infrastructure and market demand required to create a self-reinforcing entrepreneurial ecosystem. The challenge is to convert that scale into durable companies.

The government has built much of the foundation: Monsha’at has expanded support programs; SVC has helped develop private-capital markets; regulatory reforms have made it easier to establish and operate businesses; accelerators and incubators are helping companies develop; and Vision 2030 projects are creating new markets.

Private investors are now adding another layer. The record $1.72 billion in venture capital investment in 2025 shows that the market has moved beyond experimentation. International investors are entering, Saudi funds are becoming more sophisticated, and founders are beginning to think about IPOs rather than only their next funding round.

But the real measure of success will come over the next decade.

If today's startups can evolve into tomorrow's major employers, technology providers, exporters and listed companies, SMEs could become one of the most important mechanisms through which Saudi Arabia converts Vision 2030's investment cycle into a sustainable private-sector economy.

The Kingdom's transformation, in that sense, is moving from a story about building projects to building companies.

And that may be the most important economic shift of all.

The future Saudi economy will still contain major corporations and large-scale investments. But around them will increasingly sit a dense network of entrepreneurs—fintech companies supporting financial inclusion, logistics startups connecting businesses, AI companies raising productivity, healthtech ventures improving services, tourism startups creating experiences, and B2B platforms making SMEs more competitive.

Ghada Ismail

What if you could build an app without knowing how to write code?

That is the idea behind vibe coding, an emerging approach to software development that uses artificial intelligence to turn natural language instructions into working code. Instead of writing every line manually, users describe what they want to build, and an AI tool generates the code, fixes errors, and helps refine the product through an ongoing conversation.

The term “vibe coding” was popularized in 2025 by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, who described a style of programming where developers rely heavily on AI and focus more on describing the desired outcome than manually writing and reviewing every line of code.

How does vibe coding work?

Vibe coding typically starts with a simple prompt.

A user might tell an AI coding assistant: “Build a dashboard that shows monthly sales, allows users to filter by region and displays the results in charts.”

The AI can then generate the underlying code. The user tests the result and tells the AI what needs to change: perhaps the dashboard needs a different design, a new feature or a fix for an error.

This creates a conversational development cycle:

Describe → Generate → Test → Refine → Repeat.

The process can allow someone with limited programming experience to turn an idea into a functioning prototype much faster than traditional development.

Why is vibe coding becoming popular?

The rise of generative AI has significantly lowered the technical barrier to building software.

For startups, this can be particularly valuable. Founders can experiment with product ideas, build minimum viable products (MVPs), and test concepts before committing significant resources to a development team.

A nontechnical founder, for example, could use vibe coding to create an early version of a marketplace or customer portal and show it to potential customers. If the idea does not work, the founder can move on without spending months and substantial capital on development.

Even experienced developers can use the approach to speed up routine tasks, generate boilerplate code, explore ideas and create prototypes.

Vibe coding is not the same as traditional coding

The biggest difference is the role of the human.

In traditional software development, programmers typically write, inspect, and understand the code behind an application. With vibe coding, the user may focus primarily on what the software should do, while AI handles much of the implementation.

That does not mean coding knowledge has become irrelevant.

AI-generated code can contain bugs, security vulnerabilities, inefficient architecture, or technical decisions that work for a prototype but create problems as the product grows.

This is why vibe coding works best when users understand at least the basics of software development or have access to someone who can review the output.

What are the risks?

The biggest risk is assuming that working code is automatically good code.

An AI-generated application may appear to function perfectly while containing security weaknesses or scalability problems. Users may also struggle to maintain a project if they do not understand how its underlying code works.

There are also concerns around data privacy, intellectual property, and reliance on AI-generated code.

For businesses, these risks become more important as a prototype evolves into a product handling sensitive customer or financial information.

What does vibe coding mean for startups?

Vibe coding could change how early-stage companies build and validate products.

Instead of raising money first and building later, founders can potentially create functional prototypes, gather customer feedback, and demonstrate traction much earlier.

It could also make entrepreneurship more accessible by allowing people with strong ideas but limited technical skills to participate more directly in product development.

But vibe coding is unlikely to eliminate software engineers. Rather, it may change what developers spend their time doing. As AI handles more routine coding tasks, human expertise could become increasingly important in areas such as architecture, security, testing, product design, and complex problem-solving.

In that sense, vibe coding is less about replacing programmers and more about changing the interface between humans and software development.

For startups and entrepreneurs, its biggest promise may be simple: turning an idea into something users can actually try, faster than ever before.

Kholoud Hussein 

A company can have a compelling business model, strong revenue growth, and an ambitious founder—and still struggle to scale if it chooses the wrong investor. In today’s competitive funding environment, finding capital is no longer the only challenge for startups and growing companies. Finding the right investor may be just as important as securing the investment itself.

The Right Investor for Your Company: Beyond the Size of the Check

For entrepreneurs, the temptation is often straightforward: choose the investor offering the largest valuation or the biggest cheque. But capital comes with more than a financial value. It can bring strategic guidance, industry connections, governance requirements, operational expertise and, in some cases, significant pressure to deliver rapid returns.

The most suitable investor, therefore, is not necessarily the one willing to invest the most money. It is the investor whose capital, experience, network and expectations match the company's stage and ambitions.

This distinction is becoming increasingly important as startups move from an era of abundant funding toward a more selective investment environment. Investors are paying greater attention to business fundamentals, revenue quality, scalability and the path to profitability. At the same time, founders are becoming more careful about who they bring onto their cap tables.

Strategic investors: Capital with industry knowledge

For companies operating in specialized sectors, a strategic or corporate investor can offer advantages that go well beyond funding.

A strategic investor may bring access to distribution channels, customers, technology, suppliers or regulatory expertise. For a fintech startup, for example, an investment from a financial institution could potentially open doors to banking partnerships and a wider customer base.

The trade-off is that strategic investors may have objectives that differ from those of purely financial investors. Their priorities could include market access, technology integration or strengthening their own competitive position.

For a founder, the question should therefore be simple: What can this investor unlock that money alone cannot?

Venture capital: The growth partner

Venture capital investors are typically suited to businesses with the potential to scale rapidly across large markets.

Beyond funding, experienced VC firms can provide support in areas such as hiring senior executives, entering new markets, refining business models, and preparing for subsequent funding rounds. Their networks can also help startups connect with future investors and strategic partners.

However, venture capital is not suitable for every company.

VC funds generally seek significant growth and returns within a defined investment horizon. That can create pressure for a startup to expand quickly, raise additional rounds, and ultimately pursue an exit.

A profitable company that prefers steady expansion and greater founder control may therefore find that traditional venture capital is not the ideal match.

Private equity: For companies entering a new phase

As companies mature, their financing requirements often change. Private equity investors can become more relevant for businesses with established revenues, stronger operating structures and opportunities for expansion, consolidation or restructuring.

Unlike early-stage venture capital, private equity typically focuses more heavily on operational performance, cash flows and the potential to create value over a defined investment period.

For a growing company, the attraction may be the investor's ability to finance acquisitions, expand geographically or professionalize management. But founders should also be prepared for a more structured governance environment and potentially greater investor involvement in strategic decisions.

Family offices: Patient capital and relationships

Family offices have become increasingly relevant to entrepreneurs seeking investors with longer-term perspectives.

Their investment strategies vary considerably, but some family offices can offer more patient capital than traditional funds, particularly when they have a strong interest in a particular industry, geography or long-term business opportunity.

For founders, however, understanding the investment philosophy of the specific family office is crucial. Two family offices can have completely different approaches to risk, control, investment horizons and portfolio involvement.

The investor-founder relationship matters

Perhaps the most overlooked factor is chemistry.

An investment can last for years, meaning that the relationship between founders and investors can become one of the company's most important strategic partnerships. Disagreements over growth rates, hiring, acquisitions, fundraising or the timing of an exit can become costly if expectations were not aligned from the beginning.

Founders should therefore examine an investor's track record, including how they behaved when portfolio companies faced difficulties—not only how they supported companies during successful periods.

It is also worth speaking with founders of existing and former portfolio companies. Their experiences can reveal how an investor communicates, handles disagreements and supports management during challenging periods.

The right capital depends on the company's stage

There is no universal definition of the "best" investor.

An early-stage startup may need an investor who understands product development and customer acquisition. A scale-up entering new markets may prioritize international networks and operational expertise. A mature company may need growth capital, acquisition financing or support for a potential listing.

The company's funding requirements should therefore come before the investor search.

Founders should ask several fundamental questions: How much capital is actually needed? What will it finance? How quickly must the company grow? How much ownership is the founder prepared to give up? What level of investor involvement is acceptable? And what should the company look like after the investment?

The cost of choosing the wrong investor

The consequences of a poor investor match can extend well beyond dilution.

A misaligned investor can create conflicts over strategy, push for growth before the business is ready, restrict management flexibility or make future fundraising more complicated. In extreme cases, disagreements between shareholders can consume management time and distract the company from its core business.

That is why due diligence should work both ways.

Just as investors assess founders, founders should assess investors. The size of the fund, previous investments, sector expertise, portfolio conflicts, follow-on funding capacity and reputation should all form part of the evaluation.

Capital should accelerate the company's strategy—not replace it

Ultimately, the right investor is the one who understands where the company is today and where the founders want it to go tomorrow.

A strong investor-company relationship should create more than financial value. It should help the business access new markets, strengthen its management, improve its capabilities and build a more resilient organization.

For entrepreneurs, the lesson is increasingly clear: fundraising should not be treated as a race to find the biggest cheque. It should be treated as a strategic exercise to find the right partner.

The best investor is rarely the one who simply offers the most money. It is the one whose capital and capabilities can help the company achieve its next stage of growth—while allowing founders and investors to remain aligned on the road ahead.

Noha Gad

Hostile takeovers are one of the most dramatic forms of corporate conflict in the high-stakes world of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). It occurs when an acquirer attempts to gain control of a target company without the approval of its board of directors, often by making a direct offer to shareholders or launching a proxy fight to replace management. 

To face this pressure, target companies deploy a range of defensive tactics designed to raise the cost of acquisition, reduce the attractiveness of the bid, or find a more favorable alternative. White knight defense is one of the most constructive tactics that allows the target to accept the reality of a change in control while steering the outcome toward a more acceptable buyer, better terms, and greater continuity for management and operations.

How does a white knight defense strategy work?

A white knight defense is a takeover defense strategy in which a target company, facing a hostile bid, seeks out a friendly third-party acquirer and invites or encourages it to make a competing offer, thereby providing an alternative to the hostile bidder. This friendly buyer, or the white knight, is invited or encouraged by the target’s board to acquire the company on more favorable terms than the hostile bidder, often referred to as the “black knight.”

This strategy protects the target's management and often provides better compensation for shareholders, preventing control from passing to an unfriendly bidder.

How does it work?

1. The target company seeks another acquirer to stave off the unfriendly acquirer, who is typically called the black knight.
2. The white knight makes an offer to purchase the target, usually at a premium to the hostile acquirer's bid or with more favorable terms amenable to the target's shareholders, management, and/or board of directors.
3. Once the acquisition is complete, the white knight may choose to keep the target's management and/or board rather than replace one or both. The white knight may also choose to keep the target's business operations as is after the deal goes through.

Black, gray, and yellow knights

Along with the white knight, there are different types of so-called knights in the business world. The most common ones are: 

• Black knight. This type makes an unsolicited, hostile bid for its target. This entity does whatever it can to complete the transaction, even going over the target's board of directors. The target company does not want to be taken over by the black knights because of their selfish motivations.
• Gray knight. A gray knight is not as desirable as a white knight, but it is more desirable than a black knight. The gray knight is the third potential bidder in a hostile takeover who outbids the white knight. Although friendlier than a black knight, the gray knight still seeks to serve its interests.
• Yellow knight. A yellow knight is a company that planned a hostile takeover attempt, but backs out of it and instead proposes a merger of equals with the target company.

Advantages of a white knight defense strategy

The white knight defense offers several strategic benefits for target companies, their boards, and shareholders when facing hostile takeover pressure. This includes:

• Higher shareholder value. White knights typically offer better terms than hostile bidders, including higher premiums per share, more favorable payment structures, or clearer timelines for closing the deal. 
•  Preservation of management and strategic direction. Unlike hostile takeovers, which often lead to immediate leadership changes and strategic overhauls, white knight acquisitions usually retain existing management teams. The friendly acquirer typically shares the target's vision for the company's future, allowing for continuity in strategic plans and reducing uncertainty among employees and stakeholders. 
• Deal certainty and reduced transaction risk. White knight transactions are negotiated with the target's board and typically come with secured financing, transparent timelines, and clear post-merger agreements. This reduces uncertainty for all stakeholders compared to the protracted legal battles and defensive maneuvers that hostile takeovers often entail.

Despite these advantages, the white knight defense is not without significant risks and limitations, such as:

• Loss of independence. While a white knight takeover is preferable to a hostile one, it still results in the abrupt transfer of ownership to a third party. The target company becomes part of a larger entity, and its autonomy in decision-making is inevitably reduced.
• Overpayment and financial leverage risks. To outbid the hostile acquirer, white knights may overpay for the target company, leading to inflated acquisition premiums. This can result in excessive leverage for the acquiring company, which may create financial strain down the line and potentially undermine the long-term value of the combined entity. 
• Limited negotiation options and time constraints. Once a white knight is engaged, the target company may have limited options to negotiate with other potential buyers. The urgency of responding to a hostile bid often means there is insufficient time for thorough due diligence or comprehensive negotiation of terms. 

Finally, the white knight defense is less about avoiding a takeover and more about controlling its terms. By inviting a friendly acquirer, the target company can secure a higher price for shareholders, preserve management and strategic direction, and reduce the uncertainty that comes with hostile bids. However, this comes at the cost of independence and may involve rushed decisions, overpayment, and limited negotiation room. 

Ghada Ismail

Before a single road is built, a tower rises, or a railway is laid, another kind of construction is already underway high above the ground. Helicopters equipped with advanced laser scanners survey vast desert landscapes, drones capture thousands of high-resolution images over construction sites, and satellites continuously monitor coastlines, mountains, and cities. Together, these technologies create a digital blueprint of Saudi Arabia long before physical development begins. 

This is the world of geospatial intelligence, an industry that combines aerial surveying, remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), artificial intelligence, and digital modeling to transform location data into actionable insights. While largely invisible to the public, these technologies have become essential to Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, supporting giga-projects, energy infrastructure, environmental conservation, and smart city development. Behind every landmark project lies an equally ambitious effort to map, analyze, and monitor the Kingdom with unprecedented precision. 

More Than Mapping

Modern geospatial services extend far beyond aerial photography. Aircraft and drones equipped with LiDAR sensors, thermal cameras, and multispectral imaging systems capture millions of measurements every second, producing highly accurate three-dimensional models and engineering-grade imagery. Once processed through GIS platforms and AI-powered software, this data becomes a digital representation of the physical world that supports planning, construction, maintenance, and operational decision-making. 

Demand for these capabilities has surged under Vision 2030. Mega-projects such as NEOM, The Red Sea, Diriyah, Qiddiya, renewable energy developments, logistics hubs, mining operations, and transportation corridors all require continuous surveying throughout their lifecycle. Rather than relying solely on traditional ground surveys, project teams now use helicopters, drones, and satellites to collect accurate spatial data in hours instead of weeks while improving safety by reducing the need for personnel to inspect hazardous locations. 

Helicopters and Drones: Complementary Technologies

Although drones dominate today's headlines, helicopters remain indispensable for large-scale aerial surveying. While drones excel at collecting highly detailed data over localized areas, helicopters are better suited for inspecting long infrastructure corridors, oil and gas pipelines, transmission lines, coastlines, and other remote areas where endurance and payload capacity are essential.

Among the companies supporting this capability is The Helicopter Company (THC), whose expanding operations across Saudi Arabia increasingly support infrastructure inspection, environmental monitoring, emergency response, and specialized aerial surveying. 

Drones, meanwhile, have transformed data collection by making aerial surveys faster, safer, and more affordable. Construction firms monitor project progress, mining operators calculate excavation volumes, utility companies inspect transmission lines, and environmental agencies assess vegetation and coastal erosion. Increasingly, the industry's focus has shifted from the aircraft themselves to the intelligence they generate, giving rise to Saudi companies that combine aerial operations with artificial intelligence, engineering expertise, and advanced analytics. 

Turning Data into Intelligence

Collecting aerial data is only the first step. The real value lies in transforming millions of images, laser measurements, and GPS coordinates into insights that engineers and decision-makers can use.

This is where Saudi Arabia's geospatial ecosystem is rapidly evolving. Companies increasingly provide end-to-end solutions that integrate aerial surveys, AI, GIS, cloud computing, and digital engineering rather than simply delivering imagery.

One example is Terra Drone Arabia, which provides aerial surveying, LiDAR mapping, photogrammetry, industrial inspections, and digital twin services across sectors including construction, oil and gas, utilities, and mining. By combining these capabilities with AI-powered analytics, the company helps organizations move beyond visual inspections toward predictive asset management and data-driven decision-making. The broader trend is clear: geospatial companies are no longer selling images; they are delivering intelligence. 

Beyond Construction

While mega-projects often dominate discussions about geospatial technology, its applications extend across virtually every major industry. Energy companies use drones and helicopters to inspect pipelines, offshore facilities, and power transmission networks. Mining operators monitor excavation progress and environmental compliance, while agricultural businesses rely on multispectral imaging to assess crop health, irrigation efficiency, and soil conditions. Environmental agencies track desertification, biodiversity, and flood risks, telecommunications providers optimize network coverage, and insurers increasingly use aerial imagery to assess property damage and streamline claims.

These diverse applications demonstrate that geospatial intelligence is no longer a niche engineering discipline. It has become a foundational digital capability supporting industries ranging from energy and logistics to agriculture, telecommunications, public safety, and environmental management. 

Building Talent for a Growing Industry

Technology alone cannot build a geospatial economy. Every successful mission depends on pilots, engineers, GIS specialists, software developers, AI experts, and data analysts capable of transforming raw data into meaningful insights. Recognizing this need, Saudi Arabia is investing heavily in workforce development.

DroneX Academy prepares professionals for commercial drone operations through practical training and certification programs, while the Drones Academy at the College of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Jeddah integrates education, research, AI, robotics, and industry collaboration to prepare students for next-generation geospatial technologies. Meanwhile, the Drones Club at Tuwaiq Academy introduces younger innovators to drone technologies through workshops, technical challenges, and hands-on learning. Together, these initiatives reflect a shift from training drone pilots to building a complete talent pipeline for the Kingdom's expanding geospatial sector. 

The Next Frontier

Despite its rapid growth, the industry faces important challenges. Expanding commercial drone operations will require continued progress in regulation, airspace integration, and Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations. At the same time, protecting sensitive geospatial data from cyber threats and integrating information from drones, satellites, IoT sensors, and engineering systems into unified platforms will remain key priorities. Meeting growing demand for AI specialists, GIS analysts, remote sensing experts, and digital twin developers will be equally critical. 

Looking ahead, artificial intelligence is expected to accelerate the industry's evolution by automating image analysis, identifying infrastructure defects, monitoring construction progress, and detecting environmental changes.

A Digital Foundation for Vision 2030

Saudi Arabia's transformation is often measured through its skyline, mega-projects, and landmark developments. Yet much of that transformation begins long before construction starts. It starts with helicopters surveying remote terrain, drones capturing millions of data points, satellites monitoring environmental change, and engineers transforming spatial information into digital models that guide billion-riyal investments.

Companies including The Helicopter Company and Terra Drone Arabia contribute to this evolving ecosystem, while institutions such as DroneX Academy, the University of Jeddah's Drones Academy, and the Drones Club at Tuwaiq Academy are developing the talent needed to sustain it. Together, they illustrate that geospatial intelligence has evolved from a technical support function into a strategic capability underpinning infrastructure planning, industrial productivity, environmental stewardship, and digital transformation.

As Vision 2030 advances, Saudi Arabia is not only building new cities and industries; it is creating a detailed digital representation of the Kingdom itself. In many ways, the nation's next great transformation is taking shape first in the virtual world, where every road, pipeline, coastline, and building is mapped, analyzed, and understood before it is built on the ground. 

Noha Gad

The e-commerce landscape in Saudi Arabia is experiencing unprecedented growth, solidifying the Kingdom's position as the largest and most dynamic digital marketplace in the region. According to a recent report from BMI, a FitchSolutions company, household spending in the Kingdom will grow by a real 3.3% year-on-year (YoY) in 2026, a slight decline from 3.4% in 2025. The report anticipated household spending growth to accelerate slightly to 3.7% YoY in 2027, taking real spending to 39.4% above pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. This growth is driven by digital acceleration that reshapes consumer expectations, shifting the focus from mere access to products towards a demand for efficiency, transparency, reliability, and a superior overall user experience.

Within this dynamic and competitive landscape, Kanaa, a Saudi-born digital e-commerce platform, officially launched in the Kingdom in April 2026, introducing a curated commerce model designed to simplify product discovery while maintaining high standards of quality and trust. 

Sharikat Mubasher held an exclusive interview with Kartik Bhatt, CEO of Kanaa, to dive deep into the company’s business model, strategy, and technology, as well as its ambitions to expand and strengthen its presence across the Kingdom.

Kanaa officially launched in Saudi Arabia in April, introducing a curated commerce model to simplify product discovery while maintaining quality and trust. Can you tell us more about this model and what sets Kanaa apart from established marketplaces and specialty omni-retailers?

Saudi Arabia's e-commerce market has matured significantly over the past few years. Customers already have access to millions of products, fast delivery, and seamless payment options. However, all of that came with a lot of noise from endless choices, inconsistent content, bad reviews, and unpredictable service. This has made most customers insecure about whether they are making the right purchasing decision or not. They may feel that they are not getting the best deal, service, or product.

That is the thinking behind Kanaa's curated commerce model. We focus on offering the right products, presented with reliable information and backed by a consistent customer experience. Every product is carefully selected, supported with quality content and held to the same standards for pricing, fulfilment, and service.

Our model combines our own retail assortment, direct partnerships with leading brands, exclusive product collections, and a carefully managed marketplace. Each plays a specific role, but together they create a shopping experience customers can trust.

Today, our focus is on families, children, youth, and modern Saudi consumers across toys, books, gaming, hobbies, and lifestyle categories, with additional categories planned as we continue to grow.

Since launching in November 2025, we have achieved 44-fold growth in sales and a 30-fold increase in order volume. Those results confirm that we are solving a real customer need. Customers are not just looking for more products. They also need real confidence in what they are buying and where they are buying it from.

How does Kanaa plan to implement its strategy that is centered on curated selection, operational efficiency, and customer trust?

As I mentioned earlier, curation is only one part of the equation. Delivering a great customer experience depends just as much on how consistently you execute behind the scenes.

We start with the assortment itself, making sure every category has a clear purpose: everyday essentials, seasonal collections, exclusive partnerships, or marketplace offerings. Every category earns its place, and we are careful not to let the catalogue grow just for the sake of it.

Operational excellence is equally important. Customers remember whether an item was in stock, whether it arrived on time, and how quickly an issue was resolved. That is why we have invested heavily in inventory accuracy, delivery performance, returns management, and customer support. Today, we provide same-day delivery in Jeddah, are expanding that capability in Riyadh, and consistently deliver more than 98% of orders on time.

Technology underpins every stage of that experience, from search and stock visibility to personalized recommendations and a seamless checkout process. At the same time, we continue to build customer trust through transparent product information, clear policies, and responsive service.

Sales growth and traffic matter, but repeat purchases, customer loyalty, and our ability to build lasting relationships are what tell us this is actually working.

Does Kanaa integrate AI and machine learning into its business model — for search and discovery, fraud detection, pricing optimization, or logistics planning?

Absolutely. AI is already an important part of how we operate, especially in helping customers discover the right products more conveniently.

For example, a parent looking for a suitable gift or a teenager searching for gaming accessories rarely use precise search keywords. It is mostly broad categories, brand variations, use case-related keywords, etc. AI allows us to better understand customer intent and provide recommendations that feel more relevant and personalized, much like the guidance customers receive from an experienced sales advisor in a physical store.

Behind the scenes, we are also applying AI across demand forecasting, fraud detection, catalogue quality management and returns analysis. As the business grows, we will continue expanding its use across pricing optimization and logistics planning.

The real opportunity is the insights that come with connecting such capabilities. When demand shifts around a product, season, or occasion, AI can help us respond more quickly by improving inventory planning, product content, and stock allocation. That is what supports our next phase of growth, including marketplace expansion, new strategic partnerships, and our planned entry into the UAE.

A recent study conducted by Visa showed that 91% of consumers in Saudi Arabia embrace AI as part of their shopping journey. In your opinion, how do AI technologies revolutionise the shopping experience in the Kingdom?

These findings mirror current market behavior. Saudi Arabia is home to some of the most tech-forward shoppers globally, and they have already outgrown traditional e-commerce. They expect platforms to understand context and intent, bringing a level of personalization that standard catalog search simply cannot deliver 
AI helps deliver that in a few ways. It simplifies product discovery by understanding what customers are actually looking for rather than relying only on keywords. It also personalizes the experience, recognizing that someone shopping for children's toys has very different needs from someone looking for gaming products or gifts. Just as importantly, AI strengthens the experience in ways customers may not always notice directly. It improves product information, helps detect fraud more effectively, and enables faster customer service, all of which contribute to a smoother, more reliable shopping journey.

For years, online shopping missed something obvious: that helpful salesperson in the store who actually gets what you are looking for. AI finally lets us bring that human touch online, in both Arabic and English, at scale. We are not interested in AI hype for the sake of it; for us at Kanaa, it is just about making shopping easier, faster, and genuinely helpful.

What strategic partnerships are you pursuing to accelerate growth and enhance customer experience?

No platform succeeds in isolation. Our model is built entirely on smart partnerships. We deliberately chose not to build a bloated, open marketplace with lots of unverified sellers. We curate our brand and retail partners strictly because customers deserve reliable quality and pricing, not endless scrolling through questionable listings.

We take the same approach across the board. We are partnering with AI leaders to strengthen discovery, personalization, and fraud prevention capabilities that would take years to build in-house at the same quality. Logistics and last-mile partners are just as critical as merchandising ones. A platform can win a customer through marketing, but it keeps them through delivery and service.

We are also building relationships beyond conventional commerce, with schools, malls, creators and family-focused communities, because category education and gifting inspiration matter almost as much as the transaction itself. 

What are Kanaa's plans to expand its footprint within and beyond Saudi Arabia, driven by its mission to shape the next phase of e-commerce growth? What regional or international markets do you target next?

Our priority right now is the Kingdom. We want real depth here before we look anywhere else, which means strengthening our category leadership and continuing to invest in technology, fulfillment, and data. 

We still see significant demand across Saudi families, youth, and digitally native consumers who want a platform that understands their language, occasions, and service expectations.

Looking beyond the Kingdom, the GCC is the natural next step. UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman all share the digital adoption and purchasing power that fit our model, and our current plan is to enter the UAE in 2026.

We would rather take a Saudi-born platform to the region once we have proven it here than expand early and lose what makes Kanaa trusted in the first place.

As a seasoned leader with more than 20 years of experience scaling large-format retail and e-commerce businesses, how do you assess Saudi Arabia's e-commerce sector? What does the sector need over the coming years to continue growing?

Saudi Arabia's e-commerce sector has made remarkable progress over the past decade. The industry successfully addressed the fundamentals by expanding product availability, strengthening logistics, and giving consumers the confidence to shop online. That created strong and sustained growth across the market. I have watched a few markets go through this same shift, and Saudi Arabia is moving through it faster than most.

The next phase is really about the quality of the customer experience. Promotions and discounts can generate short-term sales, but long-term success depends on service reliability, customer retention, strong category expertise, and sustainable growth.

I also believe the industry has an opportunity to invest more in merchandise planning and product content, so customers get relevant assortments, accurate information, and a better overall shopping experience.

Finally, the sector needs to become even more locally relevant. That means reflecting Saudi shopping habits, family occasions, gifting traditions, and Arabic-first customer experiences in a more meaningful way. That is the shift I would tell any new entrant to prepare for.

Ultimately, I believe the companies that succeed over the coming years will be those that consistently earn customer trust through every interaction rather than those that offer the largest catalogue.

Kholoud Hussein 

From fintech unicorns to AI-powered startups, Saudi Arabia is rapidly transforming from an emerging startup ecosystem into one of the world's fastest-growing venture capital destinations. Backed by Vision 2030, government reforms, sovereign capital and an increasingly sophisticated entrepreneurial ecosystem, the Kingdom is now attracting global investors at an unprecedented pace.

For decades, global investors associated Saudi Arabia with oil, infrastructure, and large-scale government projects. Today, that perception is changing rapidly. International venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and institutional investors are increasingly looking beyond traditional sectors and directing billions of dollars toward Saudi startups, convinced that the Kingdom is entering a new era of innovation-led growth.

The shift is neither accidental nor temporary. It reflects years of structural reforms under Vision 2030, an expanding digital economy, a young and tech-savvy population, and an ambitious government determined to position Saudi Arabia as the innovation hub of the Middle East.

The numbers tell a compelling story.

According to the latest Saudi Venture Capital Report by MAGNiTT, sponsored by Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC), Saudi startups secured $1.72 billion in venture capital funding across 257 investment deals during 2025—the highest annual funding ever recorded by a single country in the MENA region. Saudi Arabia also became the region's largest VC market in both capital deployed and transaction volume, accounting for nearly half of all venture capital invested across the Middle East and North Africa. More importantly, the investor base became its most international to date, reflecting growing confidence among global funds in the scalability of Saudi startups. 

Those figures are significant not only because they represent record-breaking capital inflows, but because they highlight the evolution of Saudi Arabia from an emerging ecosystem into a mature investment destination. Unlike previous years, when venture activity depended heavily on a handful of large funding rounds, capital in 2025 was distributed across a much broader range of startups and growth stages, suggesting that the ecosystem is developing greater depth and resilience. 

A Market Too Big to Ignore

International investors are increasingly attracted to Saudi Arabia for one fundamental reason: market opportunity.

With a population exceeding 35 million, one of the highest smartphone penetration rates globally, and a digital-first consumer base, Saudi Arabia offers startups immediate access to one of the largest and wealthiest domestic markets in the region. Unlike smaller Gulf economies, founders can achieve significant scale within Saudi Arabia before expanding internationally.

The Kingdom's digital transformation has further accelerated this momentum. Government-led initiatives in digital infrastructure, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, fintech regulation, logistics, and e-commerce have created fertile ground for startups capable of solving real market problems.

Officials have repeatedly emphasized that entrepreneurship has become a strategic pillar of economic diversification. Through organizations such as Monsha'at, SVC, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), and various accelerator programs, policymakers have worked to remove barriers to business creation while increasing access to capital throughout the startup lifecycle.

The results are becoming increasingly visible. Saudi Arabia is no longer competing simply as the Gulf's largest economy; it is competing to become one of the world's most attractive destinations for venture capital.

Government Capital Is Crowding In Private Capital

One of the defining characteristics of Saudi Arabia's startup success is that public investment has encouraged—not replaced—private investment.

Instead of directly funding every startup, government-backed institutions have focused on building an ecosystem capable of attracting domestic and international investors alike.

Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC), established under the National Development Fund ecosystem, has become one of the Kingdom's most influential market enablers by investing through venture capital funds, private equity vehicles, venture debt, and direct financing initiatives. Its fund-of-funds model has significantly expanded the availability of growth capital while encouraging leading global investors to participate alongside Saudi institutions.

This catalytic approach has changed investor perceptions.

Rather than viewing Saudi Arabia as a government-driven market, international investors increasingly see an ecosystem supported by strong institutions, clear regulations, and improving exit opportunities.

MAGNiTT's latest analysis highlights that investor participation expanded dramatically during 2025, with international funds accounting for a growing share of venture transactions. The report notes that this broader investor base reflects rising confidence in the Kingdom's regulatory environment, startup quality, and long-term growth prospects. 

Global Funds Are Following the Winners

Perhaps the strongest signal of Saudi Arabia's investment maturity is the calibre of international investors now participating in funding rounds.

Major global firms—including Wellington Management, Blue Pool Capital, and several international growth funds—have joined financing rounds for Saudi startups, particularly in fintech and digital commerce. Their participation demonstrates that Saudi companies are no longer relying solely on local capital but are successfully competing for investment on a global stage. 

Delivery and quick-commerce platform Ninja secured one of the region's largest startup funding rounds, while fintech leader Tabby raised another mega-round that attracted international investors. Digital payments platform HALA also completed a major financing round, highlighting growing investor appetite for Saudi fintech infrastructure. Together, these deals have helped reshape international perceptions of the Kingdom's startup ecosystem—from a promising emerging market to one capable of producing regional category leaders. 

Yet perhaps the most encouraging development is that Saudi Arabia's growth story is no longer dependent on mega-deals alone. Funding activity has expanded across seed, Series A, and growth-stage investments, creating a healthier pipeline of companies capable of becoming the next generation of regional champions.

Where Global Capital Is Flowing—and Why

If the first phase of Saudi Arabia's startup journey was about proving the market's potential, the next phase is about identifying the sectors capable of generating regional champions and globally competitive companies. Investors are no longer asking whether Saudi Arabia has promising startups—they are asking which industries will produce the Kingdom's next unicorns.

The answer, increasingly, lies in sectors that align with both the Kingdom's structural economic transformation and global technology trends.

Fintech: The Cornerstone of Saudi Venture Capital

No sector has attracted more investor attention than fintech. As Saudi Arabia accelerates its transition toward a cashless economy, demand for digital payments, embedded finance, lending platforms, wealth management, and banking infrastructure continues to rise.

According to MAGNiTT and Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC), fintech remained the Kingdom's largest venture capital recipient in 2025, accounting for more than $500 million in funding across dozens of transactions. The sector benefited from supportive regulation by the Saudi Central Bank and the Capital Market Authority, both of which have expanded regulatory sandboxes and licensing frameworks to encourage innovation.

Investors view Saudi fintech as more than a domestic opportunity. With financial inclusion expanding across the GCC and digital banking becoming mainstream, Saudi startups are increasingly developing solutions that can be exported throughout the region.

Among the most prominent examples is Tabby, whose latest funding round attracted leading international investors and pushed its valuation above the billion-dollar mark. While headquartered in the Gulf, the company's continued expansion in Saudi Arabia reflects the Kingdom's importance as the region's largest consumer market.

Digital payments platform HALA has also emerged as a strong example of investor confidence in Saudi financial infrastructure, while newer startups specializing in SME financing, accounting automation, payroll, and embedded finance are attracting increasing attention from regional and international funds.

AI Is Becoming the Next Investment Frontier

If fintech dominated the previous wave of venture investment, artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to define the next.

Saudi Arabia has made AI a national priority through its broader digital transformation agenda. Significant government investment in cloud infrastructure, data centers, semiconductor partnerships, and AI research has created an environment where startups can commercialize AI applications at scale.

International investors increasingly view Saudi Arabia not only as a market for AI adoption but also as a place where AI companies can be built.

Rather than funding generic AI businesses, investors are focusing on startups that apply artificial intelligence to real economic sectors, including healthcare, logistics, education, legal technology, financial services, and industrial operations.

This reflects a broader global trend: venture capital is shifting away from standalone AI models toward companies that embed AI into industry-specific products capable of generating recurring revenues.

Industry observers expect AI to become one of Saudi Arabia's fastest-growing venture categories over the next five years, particularly as enterprise adoption accelerates across both government and private sectors.

Enterprise Software Is Quietly Becoming a Powerhouse

While fintech captures headlines, enterprise software—often delivered through Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms—is steadily becoming one of Saudi Arabia's most attractive investment opportunities.

Businesses across the Kingdom are digitizing operations at an unprecedented pace, creating strong demand for cloud-based accounting systems, HR platforms, procurement software, cybersecurity solutions, compliance tools, customer relationship management systems, and workflow automation.

Unlike consumer applications, enterprise software offers predictable subscription revenues, high customer retention, and scalable business models—all characteristics highly valued by venture investors.

Saudi Arabia's ambitious digitalization of both public and private sectors provides an expanding customer base for these companies, while GCC expansion offers additional growth opportunities without requiring major product adaptation.

Healthcare Innovation Moves Into Focus

Healthcare is another sector rapidly climbing investors' priority lists.

An ageing population, increasing healthcare expenditure, and growing demand for digital medical services have accelerated investment into healthtech startups offering telemedicine, AI diagnostics, digital pharmacies, hospital management systems, and preventive care solutions.

Vision 2030's emphasis on improving healthcare quality while increasing private-sector participation has created favorable conditions for entrepreneurs addressing long-standing challenges in healthcare delivery.

Global investors increasingly recognize that healthtech represents not only a commercial opportunity but also a strategic sector aligned with government priorities.

Logistics and Supply Chain Technology

Saudi Arabia's ambition to become a global logistics hub is also reshaping venture investment.

Massive infrastructure projects—including ports, airports, industrial zones, and logistics corridors—are creating demand for technology solutions capable of improving supply-chain efficiency.

Startups developing warehouse automation, freight technology, route optimization, inventory management, and cross-border commerce platforms are benefiting from this transformation.

Investors see logistics technology as one of the sectors with the strongest long-term potential, particularly as Saudi Arabia seeks to position itself as a gateway connecting Asia, Europe, and Africa.

Climate Technology Is Beginning to Attract Institutional Capital

Although still in its early stages compared with fintech and AI, climate technology is emerging as an increasingly important investment theme.

Saudi Arabia's commitments to sustainability, renewable energy, and carbon reduction are opening opportunities for startups specializing in clean energy, water management, waste recycling, smart agriculture, energy efficiency, and environmental monitoring.

Global institutional investors, many of whom now allocate capital according to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles, are expected to increase exposure to climate-focused Saudi startups as the market matures.

Analysts believe climate technology could become one of the Kingdom's fastest-growing venture sectors during the second half of this decade.

Investors Are Backing Ecosystems

Perhaps the most notable change is that international investors are no longer evaluating Saudi startups in isolation. Instead, they are investing in an ecosystem that has become increasingly interconnected.

The Kingdom now offers founders access to accelerators, incubators, venture studios, sovereign-backed investment vehicles, corporate innovation programs, university research centers, and specialized entrepreneurship initiatives.

Organizations such as Monsha'at, Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC), Sanabil Investments, and leading private VC firms—including STV, Raed Ventures, and Impact46—have helped build a financing continuum that supports companies from idea stage through late-stage expansion.

This ecosystem reduces investment risk. International funds entering Saudi Arabia today find not only ambitious founders but also stronger governance, deeper pools of local capital, more experienced management teams, and an increasingly active network of strategic partners.

As a result, many global investors are shifting from opportunistic participation in individual funding rounds to establishing long-term investment strategies focused on Saudi Arabia.

The remarkable growth of Saudi Arabia's startup ecosystem is not merely the result of larger funding rounds or more active venture capital firms. It reflects a fundamental shift in how international investors perceive the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia is no longer viewed as an emerging opportunity on the fringes of global venture capital—it is increasingly regarded as a strategic market with the potential to produce the Middle East's next generation of technology champions.

This confidence is being reinforced by a combination of demographic strength, regulatory reform, sovereign backing, and a growing pipeline of experienced entrepreneurs who have already demonstrated their ability to build and scale successful businesses.

The Rise of a Second Generation of Founders

One of the clearest indicators of a maturing startup ecosystem is the emergence of repeat entrepreneurs. In the early years of Saudi venture capital, much of the market consisted of first-time founders navigating unfamiliar territory. Today, a growing number of entrepreneurs are launching second or third ventures after successful exits or leadership roles in high-growth companies.

For investors, this significantly reduces execution risk.

Founders with prior experience typically possess stronger operational discipline, deeper industry networks, and a better understanding of fundraising, governance, and scaling. Many have also attracted senior executives from established technology companies, strengthening the overall quality of startup leadership across the Kingdom.

This evolution mirrors the development of mature ecosystems such as Silicon Valley, London, and Singapore, where experienced founders have repeatedly launched successful businesses and mentored the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Government Reforms Have Reduced Investment Risk

Another reason international capital is flowing into Saudi Arabia is the country's increasingly investor-friendly regulatory environment.

Over the past several years, the Kingdom has introduced reforms aimed at simplifying company formation, strengthening intellectual property protections, improving bankruptcy procedures, expanding digital government services, and modernizing commercial legislation. These initiatives have made it easier for both entrepreneurs and investors to establish and grow businesses.

Regulators have also introduced sector-specific frameworks that encourage innovation while providing greater legal certainty. In fintech, for example, regulatory sandboxes have enabled startups to test new financial products under the supervision of the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) and the Capital Market Authority (CMA). Similar regulatory support is emerging in areas such as digital health, mobility, and artificial intelligence.

For international investors, these reforms reduce one of the most significant barriers to entering emerging markets: regulatory uncertainty.

Sovereign Capital Is Catalyzing Private Investment

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Saudi Arabia's venture ecosystem is the role played by sovereign-backed institutions in mobilizing private capital.

Rather than dominating the market, entities such as the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC), Jada Fund of Funds, and Sanabil Investments have focused on building a sustainable investment ecosystem. Their strategy has been to act as cornerstone investors, encouraging private venture capital firms to deploy larger amounts of capital while attracting international co-investors.

This approach has created a multiplier effect.

According to SVC, every riyal committed through its investment programs is intended to crowd in additional private-sector funding, expanding the overall pool of capital available to startups. By strengthening local venture funds and supporting international partnerships, these institutions have helped create a more resilient financing environment that extends beyond government resources.

The result is an ecosystem where sovereign capital provides confidence, while private investors drive competition, specialization, and commercial discipline.

Saudi Arabia Is Becoming the GCC's Launchpad

Historically, many startups viewed Saudi Arabia as a market to enter only after establishing themselves elsewhere in the Gulf. That dynamic has shifted dramatically.

Today, an increasing number of founders are designing their businesses around Saudi Arabia from the outset, using the Kingdom as their primary market before expanding across the GCC.

Several factors explain this change.

Saudi Arabia's large population, high consumer spending, expanding digital economy, and strong government support provide startups with an opportunity to achieve meaningful scale domestically. Once successful in Saudi Arabia, businesses can leverage that experience to enter neighboring markets such as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar.

For investors, this creates a compelling value proposition: portfolio companies can validate their products in one of the region's largest markets before pursuing regional expansion.

The Next Wave of Capital

While venture capital investment reached record levels in 2025, most analysts believe the market is still in the early stages of its growth cycle.

Industry forecasts suggest that annual venture funding could continue rising steadily over the remainder of the decade, supported by increasing participation from global institutional investors, sovereign wealth funds, corporate venture capital arms, and family offices.

Several structural trends are expected to fuel this expansion:

• Greater adoption of artificial intelligence across industries. 
• Accelerated digitalization of financial services. 
• Expansion of enterprise software solutions. 
• Growth in healthcare innovation. 
• Increased investment in climate technologies and renewable energy. 
• Continued development of logistics and supply-chain technology. 
• Rising demand for cybersecurity solutions. 
• The commercialization of deep-tech research emerging from Saudi universities and innovation centers. 

Some analysts also expect new sectors—such as robotics, space technology, semiconductor design, and advanced manufacturing—to begin attracting meaningful venture capital before the end of the decade, particularly as the Kingdom continues investing heavily in research and industrial diversification.

What Investors Want Has Changed

Global investors are also becoming more selective.

The era of funding growth at any cost has largely given way to an emphasis on sustainable business models, profitability, and capital efficiency. International venture firms increasingly seek startups with clear revenue models, disciplined spending, and strong corporate governance.

Saudi startups appear well positioned for this environment.

Many have been built during a period characterized by tighter capital markets, forcing founders to prioritize operational efficiency from the outset. Investors often view this as an advantage compared with startups that expanded rapidly during periods of abundant global liquidity.

Increasingly, the question for investors is no longer whether Saudi Arabia can produce successful startups—it is which companies will emerge as the Kingdom's next regional and global leaders.

Can Saudi Arabia Become the Region's Startup Capital by 2030?

Saudi Arabia's startup story is no longer defined by isolated success stories or record-breaking funding rounds. Instead, it has evolved into a broader economic transformation that is reshaping the Kingdom's position in the global innovation economy. The question facing investors today is not whether Saudi Arabia will remain an attractive venture capital destination, but whether it can sustain this momentum and emerge as one of the world's leading startup ecosystems by the end of the decade.

Increasingly, market participants believe the answer is yes.

An Ecosystem Reaching Critical Mass

One of the defining characteristics of successful startup ecosystems is the ability to generate a self-reinforcing cycle of entrepreneurship. Founders build companies, successful exits create wealth, experienced entrepreneurs become angel investors or venture capitalists, and a new generation of startups benefits from both capital and expertise.

Saudi Arabia is beginning to exhibit many of these characteristics.

The Kingdom now hosts hundreds of active startups across fintech, enterprise software, healthtech, logistics, e-commerce, AI, gaming, and climate technology. More importantly, the supporting infrastructure has matured considerably. Venture capital funds, accelerators, incubators, government initiatives, universities, corporate innovation programs, and regulatory sandboxes are increasingly interconnected, creating an ecosystem capable of supporting startups from ideation through regional expansion.

This institutional maturity has become one of Saudi Arabia's greatest competitive advantages.

According to Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC), the Kingdom ranked first in the MENA region for venture capital funding in 2025, attracting $1.72 billion across 257 deals, equivalent to approximately 45% of all venture capital deployed across the region. The report also highlighted that Saudi Arabia led MENA in both investment value and transaction volume, reflecting the breadth of activity rather than reliance on a handful of mega-rounds.

Officials See Entrepreneurship as an Economic Imperative

Saudi policymakers increasingly view startups as a strategic pillar of economic diversification rather than a niche segment of the private sector.

Officials at SVC have consistently emphasized that expanding access to venture capital is essential to increasing private-sector participation, supporting innovation, and creating high-value employment opportunities. The organization has also highlighted the importance of developing a complete financing ecosystem that supports startups across every stage of growth—from seed funding to late-stage expansion.

Similarly, Monsha'at, the Kingdom's Small and Medium Enterprises General Authority, continues to position entrepreneurship at the center of Vision 2030. Through accelerator programs, entrepreneurial support services, training initiatives, and partnerships with local and international investors, the authority aims to increase the contribution of SMEs to GDP while strengthening Saudi Arabia's competitiveness as a regional innovation hub.

These initiatives are complemented by broader government investments in digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, advanced manufacturing, and logistics—all of which expand the addressable market for technology startups.

Global Investors Are Looking Beyond Fintech

Although fintech remains the dominant venture capital sector, investor interest is becoming increasingly diversified.

Artificial intelligence is widely expected to become the next major investment wave, particularly following Saudi Arabia's commitment to becoming a global AI leader. Startups applying AI to enterprise software, healthcare, education, logistics, financial services, and industrial automation are expected to attract growing interest from both regional and international investors.

Climate technology is another sector gaining momentum. As the Kingdom advances its sustainability agenda under the Saudi Green Initiative and expands renewable energy investments, venture capital is expected to flow toward startups specializing in clean energy, carbon management, water technologies, circular economy solutions, and sustainable agriculture.

Healthcare innovation, cybersecurity, logistics technology, and deep-tech ventures are also forecast to attract increasing levels of investment as digital transformation accelerates across the economy.

Market observers increasingly argue that Saudi Arabia's future venture capital landscape will be more balanced, with multiple high-growth sectors contributing to ecosystem expansion rather than a single dominant industry.

The Exit Challenge—and Opportunity

Despite the remarkable progress, one challenge continues to shape investor conversations: exits.

For venture capital firms, successful exits—whether through acquisitions, mergers, or public listings—are critical to recycling capital into new startups. While Saudi Arabia has witnessed several high-profile acquisitions and IPOs in recent years, many investors believe the next stage of ecosystem maturity will depend on increasing the frequency and scale of these liquidity events.

Encouragingly, several developments suggest that the outlook is improving.

The expansion of the Saudi capital market, growing corporate appetite for acquisitions, and increasing participation from private equity firms are expected to create more exit opportunities for venture-backed companies over the coming years. If this trend continues, it could further accelerate international investor participation by demonstrating clear pathways to returns.

A Regional Hub with Global Ambitions

Saudi Arabia's ambition extends beyond becoming the largest startup market in the Middle East. Increasingly, policymakers and investors envision the Kingdom as a global innovation hub capable of attracting entrepreneurs, talent, and capital from around the world.

Major initiatives such as NEOM, The Garage, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), and a growing network of venture studios and innovation districts are designed to strengthen research commercialization, attract international entrepreneurs, and foster collaboration between academia, government, and the private sector.

Combined with continued investments from sovereign institutions, these initiatives are expected to enhance Saudi Arabia's competitiveness against established innovation centers in Europe, Asia, and North America.

While forecasting venture capital flows is inherently uncertain, the underlying fundamentals suggest that Saudi Arabia's startup ecosystem is positioned for sustained expansion.

A large domestic market, supportive public policy, sophisticated institutional investors, improving regulatory frameworks, and a growing pool of experienced entrepreneurs provide a strong foundation for future growth. As more international funds establish dedicated MENA strategies—and increasingly view Saudi Arabia as the region's anchor market—the Kingdom is likely to capture an even larger share of global venture capital directed toward emerging markets.

The coming years will undoubtedly present challenges. Global economic volatility, shifting monetary policy, geopolitical developments, and increased competition for capital will continue to influence investment decisions. Yet the resilience demonstrated by Saudi Arabia's startup ecosystem during periods of global uncertainty has strengthened investor confidence rather than weakened it.

To conclude, just a decade ago, Saudi Arabia was largely absent from conversations about global venture capital. Today, it stands at the center of the Middle East's innovation economy, attracting record levels of investment and producing startups capable of competing on a regional—and increasingly international—stage.

The Kingdom's transformation is being driven by more than capital. It reflects a deliberate strategy to build an ecosystem where entrepreneurs, investors, regulators, universities, and corporations work together to create long-term economic value.

For global investors, Saudi Arabia is no longer simply a promising frontier market. It is becoming a strategic destination where scale, policy support, technological adoption, and entrepreneurial ambition converge.

If the current trajectory continues, the next decade may not simply be remembered as the period when Saudi Arabia became the Middle East's largest startup ecosystem—it may be remembered as the decade when the Kingdom emerged as one of the world's most influential centers for innovation and venture capital.

Ghada Ismail

Behind every successful startup lies an unspoken goal. It's not simply raising another funding round or achieving unicorn status; it's creating an opportunity for founders and investors to realize the value they've spent years building. In the startup world, that milestone is called a liquidity event. Whether through an acquisition, an IPO, or a secondary share sale, a liquidity event turns paper wealth into real financial returns. Understanding how it works helps founders make smarter decisions long before an exit is on the horizon.

What Is a Liquidity Event?

A liquidity event is any transaction that allows founders, investors, or employees to convert their ownership in a startup into cash or other liquid assets.

Private startup shares are typically illiquid, meaning they cannot be easily sold because they are not traded on a public market. A liquidity event unlocks that value, allowing shareholders to monetize their equity.

Why It Matters

Liquidity events reward the people who helped build the company. Founders receive compensation for years of risk-taking, employees can benefit from stock options, and investors generate returns that can be reinvested into new ventures.

They also fuel the broader startup ecosystem by encouraging venture capital, creating successful entrepreneurs, and attracting fresh investment.

Common Types of Liquidity Events

Acquisition

The most common startup liquidity event is an acquisition, where another company buys the business for cash, shares, or both. Many successful startups—including Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube—reached liquidity through acquisitions rather than public listings.

Initial Public Offering (IPO)

An IPO occurs when a private company lists on a stock exchange. Existing shareholders can eventually sell their shares, while the company gains access to public capital. However, IPOs also bring stricter regulations and greater scrutiny.

Secondary Share Sale

Founders or early investors may sell part of their shares to new investors during later funding rounds without selling the entire company. These transactions provide partial liquidity while allowing the startup to continue growing independently.

Management Buyout or Private Equity Sale

Although less common for startups, a liquidity event can also happen when the company's management team or a private equity (PE) firm buys the business from its existing shareholders.

In a management buyout (MBO), the people already running the company—such as its executives or senior managers—purchase the business and become its new owners. In a private equity sale, an investment firm acquires the company with the goal of growing its value before eventually selling it or taking it public.

In both cases, founders and early investors can sell their shares and receive cash, while the company continues to operate as a privately owned business. This type of liquidity event is more common among mature, profitable companies than early-stage startups.

Liquidity Event vs. Exit

Although often used interchangeably, the two terms are different.

An exit usually means founders or investors leave the business through a sale or IPO. A liquidity event simply means converting equity into cash. A founder who sells only part of their stake experiences liquidity without making a full exit.

Preparing for a Liquidity Event

Successful liquidity events are built years in advance. Startups should maintain clean financial records, strengthen corporate governance, protect intellectual property, and build scalable, predictable businesses. Strong preparation makes due diligence easier and often leads to higher valuations.

To Wrap Things Up…

A liquidity event is more than a payday; we can safely say it's the moment when years of building a startup translate into real financial value. Whether through an acquisition, an IPO, or a secondary share sale, it marks a major milestone for founders, investors, and employees alike. Understanding liquidity events early can help entrepreneurs make better decisions about fundraising, equity, and long-term growth.

Kholoud Hussein 

Entrepreneurship is often portrayed as a one-size-fits-all journey—an ambitious founder develops an idea, secures funding, launches a startup, and scales it into a successful business. In reality, however, entrepreneurs come in many forms, each driven by different motivations, risk appetites, and long-term ambitions. While some are determined to build the next billion-dollar company, others are passionate about solving local challenges, creating social impact, or simply achieving financial independence.

Understanding your entrepreneurial personality is more than an exercise in self-awareness. It can help you choose the right business model, attract suitable investors, build an effective team, and make strategic decisions that align with your vision. As global startup ecosystems continue to mature—particularly across the Middle East, where entrepreneurship is becoming a cornerstone of economic diversification—recognizing your entrepreneurial type has never been more important.

1. The Innovator

Innovators are the entrepreneurs who redefine industries. They introduce groundbreaking products, disruptive technologies, or entirely new business models that challenge the status quo. Rather than improving existing solutions, they focus on creating something the market has never seen before.

These entrepreneurs are naturally curious, highly creative, and willing to take calculated risks. They often invest significant time and resources in research and development before bringing their ideas to market.

Strengths:

• Visionary thinking
• High growth potential
• Ability to create new markets

Challenges:

• Long development cycles
• High capital requirements
• Greater market uncertainty

Think of founders behind revolutionary technologies such as artificial intelligence platforms, biotech companies, or next-generation fintech solutions.

2. The Scalable Startup Founder

This is the entrepreneur most associated with the startup ecosystem. Their goal is rapid growth, often backed by venture capital, with ambitions to expand across regions—or even globally.

Scalable founders prioritize technology, automation, and repeatable business models. They continuously measure growth metrics, customer acquisition costs, and revenue scalability.

These entrepreneurs thrive in sectors such as SaaS, fintech, healthtech, logistics, and e-commerce.

Success is measured by:

• Market expansion
• Investment rounds
• Revenue growth
• Exit opportunities through acquisitions or IPOs

3. The Lifestyle Entrepreneur

Not every entrepreneur dreams of becoming the next unicorn founder. Lifestyle entrepreneurs build businesses that support the life they want rather than allowing the business to define their lives.

Many freelancers, consultants, digital creators, coaches, and boutique agency owners fall into this category. Their priorities often include flexibility, autonomy, and sustainable income instead of aggressive expansion.

While these businesses may never seek institutional investment, they can generate consistent profitability and long-term stability.

4. The Social Entrepreneur

For social entrepreneurs, profit is only part of the equation. Their primary mission is solving societal or environmental challenges while maintaining a financially sustainable organization.

Whether addressing education gaps, healthcare accessibility, food security, renewable energy, or financial inclusion, these founders measure success by both financial performance and social impact.

With governments increasingly supporting ESG initiatives and sustainable development, social entrepreneurship is becoming a major contributor to modern economies.

5. The Small Business Entrepreneur

Small business entrepreneurs represent the backbone of every economy. They establish businesses that primarily serve local communities, including restaurants, retail stores, manufacturing firms, professional services, and family-owned enterprises.

Unlike venture-backed startups, these businesses generally rely on personal savings, bank financing, or traditional lending rather than external equity investment.

Although they may not dominate headlines, small businesses collectively generate millions of jobs and contribute significantly to GDP across developed and emerging markets alike.

6. The Corporate Entrepreneur (Intrapreneur)

Entrepreneurship does not always require starting a company from scratch. Corporate entrepreneurs—or intrapreneurs—drive innovation from within established organizations.

They develop new products, launch business units, improve operational processes, and identify growth opportunities while leveraging the company's existing resources.

Many successful innovations have originated from employees who were encouraged to think and act like entrepreneurs inside large corporations.

7. The Acquisition Entrepreneur

Rather than creating a business from zero, acquisition entrepreneurs purchase existing businesses and improve their operations.

Their expertise lies in identifying undervalued companies, streamlining operations, expanding customer bases, and increasing profitability before holding or selling the business.

This model has gained popularity among experienced investors and entrepreneurs looking for lower startup risk compared to launching a new venture.

8. The Serial Entrepreneur

Some entrepreneurs simply love building companies. Once they achieve success—or even after experiencing failure—they move on to launch another venture.

Serial entrepreneurs accumulate valuable experience, extensive networks, and operational expertise across multiple industries. Their previous successes often make it easier to attract investors, recruit talent, and enter new markets.

Many of today's most influential founders have built several companies throughout their careers rather than dedicating themselves to a single business.

Which Entrepreneur Are You?

Most founders don't fit neatly into one category. A startup founder may begin as an innovator, evolve into a scalable entrepreneur after attracting investors, and eventually become a serial entrepreneur following a successful exit. Likewise, a lifestyle entrepreneur may discover an opportunity that transforms a small business into a high-growth company.

Your entrepreneurial identity also changes as markets evolve. Economic shifts, technological advances, access to funding, and customer demand can all influence how you build and grow your business.

The key is understanding your priorities. Are you motivated by rapid expansion or long-term independence? Do you seek financial returns, social impact, or industry disruption? Your answers will shape everything from your funding strategy to your hiring decisions.

Finally, there is no universally "best" type of entrepreneur. Every entrepreneurial path contributes differently to economic growth, innovation, and job creation. While venture-backed startups often attract the spotlight, local businesses, social enterprises, corporate innovators, and lifestyle entrepreneurs all play essential roles in building resilient economies.

Ultimately, successful entrepreneurship is not about following someone else's blueprint—it's about understanding your own strengths, ambitions, and definition of success. The entrepreneurs who thrive are those who build businesses that align with their vision, adapt to changing markets, and create lasting value for customers, investors, employees, and society.

Noha Gad

In a world where every purchase, partnership, and policy is increasingly visible, the way investors invest carries more weight than ever. Money is no longer just a tool for growth; it is a statement of what we believe in and the future we want to build. For decades, investing was framed as a simple trade-off: maximize returns, and leave ethics at the door. Today, that narrative is crumbling. Across global markets, investors are asking a different question: How can I grow my wealth without compromising my values?

This shift is not only moral; it is strategic. Companies that ignore environmental risks, social expectations, or governance standards are increasingly exposed to scandals, regulation, and reputational damage. At the same time, businesses leading in sustainability, innovation, and responsible practices are positioning themselves for long-term resilience.

Ethical investing sits at the heart of this transformation. It is the practice of aligning investment decisions with moral, social, and sometimes religious principles, while pursuing sound financial returns. 

What is meant by ethical investing?

Ethical investing is an investment strategy where the investor’s ethical values are the primary objective, along with good returns. With suspicious and illegal investment deals on the rise, many investors are starting to insist that companies they invest in are socially responsible. This means treating their employees with respect, creating healthy products and services, and keeping away from unethical business practices.

Types of ethical investing

Ethical investing is not a single strategy; it is a family of approaches that help investors align their portfolios with their values. Each type uses different tools to direct capital toward what the investor considers “good” and away from what they consider harmful. Key types are:

• Socially Responsible Investing Funds (SRI Funds). This type avoids investing in controversial areas such as gambling, firearms, tobacco, alcohol, and oil. They focus on moral and social values, often with an emphasis on avoiding harm.
• Environmental, Social and Governance Funds (ESG Funds). Unlike SRI funds, ESG funds consider in their decision-making how environmental, social and governance risks and opportunities can cause material impacts on a company’s performance. They typically evaluate carbon emissions, water usage, and climate risk; assess employee treatment, diversity, and community relations; and review board structure, executive pay, and transparency.
• Impact Funds. This type of fund places equal importance on fund performance. Hence, they aggressively focus on creating ethical changes and supporting companies that provide certain products and services. Impact funds are suitable for investors who are socially responsible but also want good returns.
• Faith-based Funds. Faith-based funds only invest in stocks that follow religious values and ideals, and strictly exclude investments that don’t fit the category.

Advantages And Disadvantages

Ethical investing offers meaningful benefits, but it also comes with trade-offs. Understanding both sides helps you decide whether it fits your goals and how to design your portfolio wisely. Major benefits are:

• Alignment with personal values: Ethical investing lets investors direct capital toward companies and projects that reflect their moral and social beliefs.
• Potential for long-term performance: Companies with strong ESG practices are often better managed and less exposed to scandals, which can support stable earnings and competitive returns over time.
• Risk mitigation: Screening out firms with poor environmental, social, or governance practices can reduce exposure to lawsuits, fines, and reputational damage. 
• Positive social and environmental impact: Ethical investing channels money into areas like clean energy, fair labor, healthcare, and education, contributing to broader societal goals.

Disadvantages

• Limited Investments: Excluding certain sectors narrows investors’ options, which can reduce diversification and potentially limit returns. Avoiding entire industries may mean missing out on profitable opportunities in specific market conditions.
• Potential for lower returns: Ethical funds may underperform in periods when excluded sectors outperform, as they prioritize values over maximum profit.
• Higher costs and fees: Specialized research and active management often lead to higher fees compared to standard index funds. These costs can erode net returns, especially in smaller or niche ethical funds. 
• More research and due diligence: Ethical investing demands extra effort to verify that holdings align with your values, requiring time and expertise. This can be a barrier for investors who prefer simpler, passive strategies.

Finally, ethical investing is a fundamental shift in how capital is allocated in a transparent, interconnected world. It offers a powerful way to align your financial goals with your values, support responsible businesses, and potentially reduce long-term risks. By understanding the strategies, benefits, and limitations, investors can build a portfolio that reflects who they are and the future they want to support, without abandoning sound financial principles.

Ghada Ismail

Media buying has come a long way from negotiating television spots, newspaper placements, and billboard locations. Today, it is a data-driven discipline powered by artificial intelligence (AI), automation, audience analytics, and real-time optimization. Brands are no longer simply buying advertising space; instead, they are investing in technologies and strategies that ensure their marketing investment reaches the right audience at the right time.

This transformation is reshaping advertising markets worldwide, and Saudi Arabia is no exception. As businesses accelerate their digital transformation under Vision 2030, advertisers are demanding smarter, faster, and more measurable campaigns. In response, a new generation of Saudi companies is redefining media buying by combining technology, creativity, and data-driven decision-making.

While the term "AdTech" is often associated with software platforms and AI-powered advertising tools, Saudi Arabia's evolving media buying ecosystem extends beyond startups developing proprietary technology. It also includes agencies that integrate digital marketing, analytics, creative strategy, and campaign optimization into comprehensive media buying services. Together, these companies are helping brands navigate an increasingly complex advertising landscape.

Media Buying Has Become a Technology Business

The rise of digital platforms has fundamentally changed the role of media buyers. Instead of manually selecting where advertisements should appear, marketers now rely on sophisticated tools that analyze audience behavior, measure campaign performance, and automate bidding across multiple advertising channels.

Programmatic advertising has become a cornerstone of modern media buying, allowing advertisers to purchase digital inventory in milliseconds using automated auctions. AI algorithms continuously evaluate campaign performance, optimize budgets, and identify high-performing audiences, enabling businesses to maximize return on investment while reducing wasted advertising spend.

This shift has transformed media buying from a transactional activity into a strategic business function. Success is no longer measured solely by how many people see an advertisement, but by how effectively campaigns generate engagement, conversions, and long-term customer value.

Why Saudi Arabia Is Ripe for Innovation

Saudi Arabia's rapidly expanding digital economy has created fertile ground for innovation in advertising and media buying. The Kingdom boasts one of the highest internet and smartphone penetration rates in the region, while social media platforms have become central to consumer engagement and purchasing decisions.

At the same time, the government is encouraging businesses across sectors to embrace digital transformation, increasing demand for sophisticated marketing solutions. As companies compete for consumer attention in an increasingly crowded online environment, they require partners capable of combining media planning, creative storytelling, data analytics, and performance measurement into integrated campaigns.

This growing demand has opened opportunities for Saudi agencies to move beyond traditional advertising and adopt technology-driven approaches that improve campaign efficiency and accountability.

How Saudi Companies Are Reinventing Media Buying

Saudi Arabia's media buying ecosystem is evolving through companies that blend strategic planning with digital innovation, helping brands reach audiences across multiple channels while delivering measurable business outcomes.

Bassmat is among the agencies reflecting this evolution. As an integrated marketing communications company, it offers media planning and buying alongside services such as digital strategy, search engine optimization, social media management, public relations, and campaign analytics. Rather than treating media buying as an isolated service, Bassmat positions it within a broader communications strategy that allows brands to coordinate messaging across digital and traditional platforms.

A similar integrated approach can be seen at True Vision (TrueVS), which focuses on digital marketing and performance-driven campaigns. By combining media buying with branding, creative development, audience targeting, and digital strategy, the agency helps businesses optimize advertising investments based on measurable results instead of impressions alone. This reflects a wider industry shift toward performance marketing, where campaign success is evaluated through conversions, customer acquisition, and return on investment.

Lenzo demonstrates how media buying is expanding beyond digital advertising into experiential marketing. The agency specializes in brand activations, exhibitions, events, and immersive experiences that connect physical engagement with digital promotion. As brands increasingly seek omnichannel marketing strategies, companies like Lenzo illustrate how media buying now extends across multiple consumer touchpoints, creating campaigns that bridge online and offline experiences.

Meanwhile, Tech Wave highlights the growing convergence between technology consulting and marketing services. Known for its expertise in software development and digital transformation, the company also provides digital marketing solutions that leverage technology to improve campaign effectiveness. This reflects a broader trend in which media buying increasingly relies on technological capabilities, including automation, analytics, and digital infrastructure, rather than creative execution alone.

Although these companies operate with different business models, they share a common objective: helping advertisers make smarter decisions using technology, customer insights, and integrated marketing strategies.

AI Is Changing the Rules

Artificial intelligence is becoming one of the most influential forces shaping the future of media buying. AI-powered tools can analyze vast amounts of consumer data, predict purchasing behavior, identify the most valuable audience segments, and continuously optimize campaigns while they are running.

Instead of relying on historical performance alone, advertisers can now adjust budgets in real time, personalize advertising messages, and automate routine campaign management tasks. These capabilities improve efficiency while enabling marketing teams to focus on strategy and creativity.

For agencies, AI is not replacing human expertise but enhancing it. Success increasingly depends on combining technological capabilities with market knowledge, creative thinking, and a deep understanding of consumer behavior.

What Comes Next?

Saudi Arabia's media buying industry is expected to keep evolving as more businesses invest in digital transformation and online advertising. To stay competitive, agencies will continue adopting new technologies such as AI-powered analytics, smarter audience targeting, creator marketing, and integrated campaigns that run across multiple platforms.

The advertising industry is also adapting to growing privacy expectations. As third-party cookies become less common, brands are placing greater value on first-party data collected directly from their own customers. Agencies that can help businesses use this data effectively while still reaching the right audiences are likely to have a competitive advantage.

Generative AI is also set to play a bigger role in media buying. It can help agencies create content faster, identify the best audience segments, and optimize campaigns more efficiently. While AI will automate some routine tasks, it is unlikely to replace marketing professionals. Instead, it will make human creativity and strategic thinking even more valuable, allowing agencies to deliver smarter and more effective campaigns.

Conclusion

Media buying is no longer simply about purchasing advertising space. It has become a multidisciplinary practice where technology, creativity, analytics, and customer experience work together to deliver measurable business outcomes.

Saudi Arabia's media buying industry reflects this transformation. While innovation is often associated with AdTech platforms, the Kingdom's broader ecosystem of marketing agencies is also playing a critical role in modernizing how brands reach consumers. Companies such as Bassmat, TrueVS, Lenzo, and Tech Wave demonstrate that successful media buying increasingly depends on integrating strategic planning, digital expertise, and technology into every stage of the advertising journey.

As Saudi Arabia continues building a digital-first economy, the organizations that combine innovation with measurable performance will help define the next chapter of the Kingdom's advertising industry, one where media buying is not just about visibility, but about delivering meaningful business results.