Investors put money into seven deals this week, and none of them were flashy consumer apps. Instead, the capital went to fixing actual gaps: teenagers who don’t know how to manage money, fitness trainers drowning in spreadsheets, businesses bleeding cash on cloud bills, and renters stuck with manual lease paperwork.
Business For Teens in Egypt closed a six-figure pre-seed from angels including training expert Salah Abou Elmagd. Nadeem Barakat started the company in 2024 to teach 10-16 year-olds how money and business actually work. Over 10 schools in Egypt and Saudi Arabia already use the program—that’s more than 600 kids who now understand profit margins and compound interest. The funding pushes that to 30 schools and 6,000 students by year-end.
Also in Egypt, FitXpert landed a seven-figure check from Foras Investment’s 0107 Invest arm. Salah Selim and Mostafa Mahmoud built software that automates the boring parts of running a gym or nutrition practice—client schedules, workout plans, progress tracking. Arab fitness businesses have been asking for this. Now they’ll get it across more markets.
Over in the UAE, MilkStraw AI raised $2 million led by VentureSouq. Jawad Shreim’s company uses AI to cut cloud infrastructure costs by up to 75%. That’s not a small deal when you’re a startup burning through AWS bills. Over 100 companies—Thndr, Maqsam, Ziina among them—already use it. Shreim closed the round in 45 days, which tells you how badly startups need this right now.
Saudi PropTech Aamar pulled in over $4 million in seed funding from Aqar App, Razm Investment, Al Majdiah Investment, and Blom Invest. The startup launched late 2023 and already processed more than SAR 150 million ($40 million) in rental transactions for over 10,000 customers. The AI handles lease agreements and financing paperwork that usually takes days. Now they’re expanding beyond Riyadh.
Egypt’s mylo, the fintech arm of B.TECH, issued EGP 1.76 billion ($37.2 million) in securitization bonds. The 12-month bonds, approved this month with EG Bank handling custody, will fund more Shariah-compliant consumer loans. It’s mylo’s second bond issuance, which means investors trust the model enough to come back.
NEOM picked five Saudi game studios for funding through its Level Up accelerator: Aiqona Productions, Fourcast Studio, Makera, OFF BOX Studios, and Phys. Each studio gets pre-seed capital, 600 hours of mentorship over seven months, plus connections to publishers like Kwalee and Tamatem Games. Saudi Arabia wants a gaming industry. This is how you build one.
The most surprising deal came from Damascus. Doushesh, a classifieds platform for real estate, cars, electronics, and jobs, closed a pre-seed round in early January. Alaaeddin Zarzour and Zafer Odabashi run it out of Syria—a market most investors won’t even look at. But someone did. The money goes toward scaling up and building better trust features for users.
What this week shows: money is going to tools people actually need, not things that sound cool in pitch decks. Education platforms got funded. Enterprise software got funded. Financial infrastructure got funded. And yes, even Syria got funded. That’s what happens when investors stop chasing hype and start backing problems worth solving.
