Top 5 Blockchain Startup Investors in Saudi Arabia in October 2023

Shorooq Partnersis the leading tech investor in the region, inspired by the best entrepreneurs, investors and practices from around the world.

Investment focus

Financial Services, E-Commerce, FinTech
Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, United States

Portfolio highlights

Dtonic — Efficient Spatio-Temporal Big Data Processing across Smart-X Industries
The Food Lab — The Food Lab is a cloud kitchen platform but describes itself as an infrastructure company for restaurants in Egypt — about 400,000 in number — in the food & beverage (F&B) space. The company provides a full suite of end-to-end services, including cloud kitchen (kitchen as a service) and procurement.
Retailo Technologies — Retailo is an online regional B2B marketplace platform that serves small and medium-sized retail businesses, including kiryana and baqala stores, in the MENAP region. We are using technology to digitize and streamline the retail sector to make it more efficient.

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Polygon is the most proven way to build and scale your decentralized application and projects on Ethereum, the world's largest blockchain ecosystem.

Investment focus

Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Gaming
Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
United States, United Kingdom, India

Portfolio highlights

GAM3S.GG — Your home of web3 gaming offering game discovery, reviews, guides, news & quests for a full experience.
Cosmic Wire — Cosmic Wire is the next-gen Internet: connecting worlds, empowering creators and transforming industries through Web3 innovation and blockchain solutions.
Delabs Games — At Delabs Games, we want to create fun games that last a thousand years.

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Animoca Brands is a metaverse and gaming venture capital firm that focuses on driving digital property rights to gamers and internet users through NFTs. It utilizes gamification and blockchain to develop and market a portfolio of mobile applications, games, and additional products oriented to educational learning to ensure transparency, security,and new business models.

Investment focus

Blockchain, Gaming, Cryptocurrency
Seed, Series A, Funding Round
United States, Hong Kong, United Kingdom

Portfolio highlights

Clozer — Sell experiences & run gamified giveaways to grow your music streams
move.ai — Move.ai provides motion capture platforms and tools to enable augmented and extended reality productions using AI and computer vision.
SupraOracles — We're supercharging oracles to provide blockchains better, faster, accurate, and more secure off-chain data.

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Wa’ed Ventures is the venture capital arm of Saudi Aramco Entrepreneurship Center (Wa’ed), established by Saudi Aramco with the vision of igniting the spirit of entrepreneurship in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Wa’ed has deployed a suite of programs over the years to assist entrepreneurs in establishing, enhancing, or expanding their ventures. Theseprograms comprise development and financial support including business incubation, coaching and training to guide and nurture entrepreneurs along different business stages, seed funding, non-collateral loans, venture capital (equity/debt) investment, and business development. These programs support the development of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) capable of localizing industries and diversifying the Kingdom’s economy. Wa’ed also collaborates and engages with key players in order to create an effective entrepreneurship ecosystem.Wa’ed aspires to provide leadership in promoting entrepreneurship to support economic growth, diversification, and social development in Saudi Arabia, in alignment with the Kingdom’s strategic thrust into moving towards a knowledge-based economy. The organization aims to turn innovative ideas into successful projects, create and support sustainable SMEs, and develop entrepreneurs into successful business owners.Wa’ed Ventures aims to fuel the growth of high potential companies, thereby promoting economic development in Saudi Arabia with job creation for Saudi nationals, technological improvement, knowledge transfer, economic diversification, and economic growth within the Kingdom. The firm focuses on seed, early, and growth-stage businesses across a diverse range of sectors including information and communication technology (ICT), energy, manufacturing, healthcare, and services – from mobile application platforms and technologies to industrial equipment manufacturing to advanced software solutions.

Investment focus

Information Technology, Software, Intelligent Systems
Series A, Seed, Funding Round
Saudi Arabia, India, Luxembourg

Portfolio highlights

ELEVATUS — Hire the world's best talent with our award-winning recruitment software, Elevatus. Recruit a talented workforce that will help your company succeed and grow.
OQ TECHNOLOGY — OQ Technology's Satellite 5G IoT - The world's first global satellite 5G operator, that can collect data from more than 1000 sensors, and so providing cellular coverage for assets and machines anywherer in the world.
MANAFA Capital — MANAFA is an online marketplace for investing equity into innovative, early-stage companies. It provides sophisticated investors free access to direct investment opportunities, diligence tools and industry data insights for an asset class that was previously very difficult to access. For entrepreneurs, MANAFA offers an efficient way to access anetwork of sophisticated investors as well as leading partners.

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