Saudi and UAE startups took almost 90% of MENA venture capital funding

The UAE and Saudi Arabia accounted for almost 90% of the USD 2.98 bn raised by MENA startups in the first nine months of the year, according to venture capital tracker Magnitt. Every round of USD 100 mn or more went to startups in those two countries.

Big checks, fewer deals: Regional funding fell 7% y-o-y during this period, and the number of deals dropped by a third, per Magnitt data seen by EnterpriseAM. Early-stage deals fell 45%, the research outfit says.

More local money: MENA-based investors supplied 58% of the capital raised during this period, up from 50% a year earlier, while the value of tickets written by foreign investors dropped to 42% of the total.

Humain is teaming with Napster: Humain is partnering with the US-based AI company Napster (yes, this is basically the old music pirating service, but it’s gone through a LOT of purchases and rebrands since those wild, turn-of-the-millennium days) to build Arabic-first AI agents for public and private sector clients across the region. Here are the details in a press release from the companies.

The Italian Job: Core42, G42’s cloud arm, is teaming up with Assolombarda, a business group representing companies in and around Milan, to help Italian manufacturers start using AI, the companies said in a press release.

Presight reads the news: G42-backed Presight has signed an MoU with Abu Dhabi’s X14 Media, which builds Arabic-first AI tools for tracking and analyzing news content, the companies said in a statement. The companies will explore building AI-powered media intelligence for governments, public institutions, and companies.

Nvidia bets on Europe: The chipmaker will announce USD 2 bn in European investments over the next week, Bloomberg reports. That’s on top of the USD 8 bn it has put into the continent over the past year. The company is also backing four French startups.