Riyadh - Sharikat Mubasher: The GCC edition of the ‘Global Private Debt Report 2026: a Venture & Growth Credit Lens’, launched by Stride Ventures, revealed that the private debt across the GCC reached $4.1 billion in 2025, growing 8.2x from $0.5 billion in 2024.
The report stated that Saudi Arabia was the region’s most active market for structured credit deployments, with startups securing $3.9 billion, representing 95% of the total volume. The UAE came in second place at $211 million, followed by Bahrain at $22 million.
At the sector level, fintech dominated the market with private debt of $3.9 billion, accounting for 95.5% of total private debt deployment. Credit activity was also seen in sectors such as agritech, proptech, SaaS, and logistics.
These figures reflect the rising use of non-dilutive capital to support expansion, acquisitions, lending-book growth, and platform scale. The shift is also visible in the region’s overall funding mix. Of the $7.4 billion in tracked startup investments across the GCC in 2025, private debt contributed $4.1 billion, ahead of venture capital at $3.3 billion.
This signals a clear change in how growth is being financed, with structured credit moving from a supporting role to a primary driver of scale.
The report affirmed that the rise of private debt across the GCC was driven by sovereign-backed capital, regulatory enablement, fintech expansion, and policy-led scale-up acceleration, which have created conditions where large-ticket structured credit transactions are viable earlier in company lifecycles.
Fariha Javed, Partner of GCC & Global Capital Formation at Stride Ventures, commented: “The GCC’s private debt market has moved from early exploration to institutional conviction. What stands out is not just the scale of deployment and participation of the region’s largest sovereign wealth funds, but the fact that credit is entering the capital stack earlier in the company lifecycle, especially across fintech and asset-backed models. This reflects a market that is increasingly being underwritten with structure, rigour, and long-term intent, and our commitment to have $500 AUM across the region by the end of 2028.”
The report highlighted how private debt is becoming a central pillar of the region’s startup financing ecosystem, emphasizing that the region is shaping a distinct model where structured credit is being embedded earlier in the growth journey for regional founders.
