Dubai-born Enhance raises USD 18.2 mn for US expansion

Dubai-born fitness tech platform Enhance secured USD 18.2 mn in a combined equity and venture debt round to grow its operational footprint across the US from its current 700+ locations, according to a press release (pdf). The equity tranche was led by Dubai-based VC fund Global Ventures, while the venture debt was structured by India’s Stride Ventures.

The funding rationale: Enhance is using equity to fund longer-term platform development, including rolling out its US services partnership, expanding its AI capabilities, and deploying the SaaS contracts already in hand, Enhance founder Tarek Mounir tells EnterpriseAM. Meanwhile, the venture debt tranche will finance its expansion against contracted revenue, he adds.

What Enhance does: The platform turns Enhance’s own operating playbook — eight years running personal training (PT) floors across the GCC — into enterprise software for gyms. Every US vendor treated PT as a scheduling problem, Mounir says, explaining why there was a gap in the US market for Enhance’s product — Enhance treats it as an operating one. It deploys AI to automate the program-building layer of PT while keeping trainers responsible for client relationships — a structure Mounir says should allow the company to scale without a corresponding increase in central costs.

The business model: In the US, Enhance’s entry point is enterprise SaaS — per-location licensing. Where gyms want more, it goes further: its first full-service US partnership has Enhance running personal training end-to-end, tying its revenue to the gym’s PT income rather than its software budget.

The GCC remains Enhance’s largest revenue source, where it still runs PT services end-to-end. Saudi Arabia is its fastest-growing market, with Mounir pointing to rising participation in formal fitness there, while the UAE headquarters remains the company’s “operational and product brain,” he adds.

What's next: Enhance is targeting 850 US locations by the end of 2026, with faster deployment planned for 2027 through new strategic partnerships, Mounir says.