Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led a $25M Series A in Saudi fintech Stitch, marking the US VC giant's first investment in the GCC. Stitch builds a cloud-native operating system for financial institutions and processed over $5B in transactions in the last six months.
INTERPOL coordinated a first-of-its-kind cybercrime crackdown across 13 MENA countries, resulting in 201 arrests, 382 additional suspects identified, and 53 servers seized. The operation disrupted phishing-as-a-service networks and rescued human trafficking victims forced into financial fraud.
Deloitte's 2026 Middle East AI report highlights how Saudi Arabia and the UAE are leading three transformational AI trends — Agentic AI, Physical AI, and Sovereign AI — with enterprises rapidly moving from strategy to production deployment across the region.
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation announced OpenTelemetry's graduation on May 21, solidifying it as the industry standard for vendor-neutral observability. The project now spans metrics, logs, and traces with thousands of contributors and massive production adoption.
Saudi VC firm Khwarizmi Ventures launched Fund II with a $70M+ first close, targeting seed and Series A startups across the GCC. The firm has backed 30+ companies including Calo, Eyewa, and Tamara, and achieved five exits from Fund I. The new fund remains sector-agnostic with focus on fintech, consumer tech, and AI.