INFOGRAPHIC: Startup Funding in Africa and the Middle East — Week 16, 2025

After a cold Q1, sparks of momentum are flickering back to life across Africa and the Middle East. While African startup funding wrapped up March with a modest $50 million, a handful of standout raises hint at something stirring beneath the surface.

One of the clearest signals of this resurgence comes from South Africa, where payments infrastructure company Stitch recently secured $55 million in a Series B round led by QED Investors, alongside Flourish Ventures, Norrsken22, and Glynn Capital. The raise marks a pivotal step for Stitch as it aims to deepen its in-person payments offering, venture into the acquiring space, and further strengthen its online payments suite.

Over in the Middle East, the mood is slightly more cautious, but far from quiet. Despite a 2.2% dip in the Tadawul All-Share Index, largely attributed to tariff jitters from the U.S., investor appetite hasn’t dried up.

In Israel, Groundcover, a cloud-native application monitoring solution, closed a $35 million Series B round led by Zeev Ventures, with support from Angular, Heavybit, and Jibe Ventures. With a total of $60 million now raised, the company is positioning itself to disrupt legacy APM platforms in a major way.

Closely behind is Anecdotes, another Israeli startup focused on enterprise GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance), which secured $30 million in Series B funding. Led by DTCP, this round builds on an earlier $25 million raised from Gillot, with continued backing from Vertex and Red Dot. The startup is now scaling up to drive global GRC innovation.

Meanwhile, clean energy tech is picking up steam across Africa as the push for sustainable solutions grows louder. Quietly fueling that movement, Nigeria’s Arnergy has raised an additional $15 million in a Series B extension, adding to the $3 million secured in 2023 and bringing total funding to $18 million. The new capital will help the solar power company expand access to clean energy, especially in Nigeria’s underserved areas.

Then there is Polytope Labs, the team behind Hyperbridge, a highly scalable blockchain interoperability protocol, that has raised over $5 million, including $2.5 million in seed and $2.8 million in public sale. These followed a successful $2.7 million crowd loan, earning Hyperbridge a parachain slot and making it one of the most successful blockchain projects of the year.

Meanwhile, in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia-based Sadq, a digital signature platform, received $1.5 million pre-Series A round led by X by Unifonic Fund, alongside several private investors and a strategic investment from Unifonic itself.

Also joining the funding wave is TruBuild, a Saudi construction tech startup, which has raised $1 million in seed funding led by Wa’ed Ventures and Dar Ventures, with participation from Plug & Play Ventures, OQAL, Taz Investment, and other angel investors.

What’s interesting, though, is how even the smaller, lesser-known startups are making bold moves that hint at bigger shifts in the region’s tech landscape.

Further south, Zimi, a South African EV charging startup, has landed $320,000 (R6 million) in grant funding from the EEP Africa Trust Fund. The grant will fund a pilot for its vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, which will allow electric vehicles to consume less and give back power to homes, businesses, or the grid when needed.

Egyptian quick commerce startup Rabbit also secured an undisclosed amount of funding from blue-chip investors and expanded into Saudi Arabia by opening a regional HQ in Riyadh.

Together, these funding rounds, big and small, paint a picture of a region shaking off a sluggish start and stepping into a phase of renewed momentum. From fintech giants fueling payment infrastructure to climate tech innovators quietly laying the groundwork for a greener future, Africa and the Middle East are proving that even in uncertain times, innovation doesn’t stall—it evolves.