Raed Ventures

Raed Ventures Research

Investment Thesis

Raed Ventures (RAED) is an early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2015 and based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, positioning itself as one of the region's earliest institutional backers of technology companies. The firm partners with exceptional founders building breakthrough companies and creating scalable impact across MENA. RAED explicitly frames its mandate around three objectives: generating strong financial returns, creating social impact through job creation and women's empowerment, and accelerating the regional technology ecosystem. Beyond capital, the firm runs a value-add program called RaedPlus, which connects portfolio founders to expert networks, talent recruitment support, and discounted vendor services, and leverages RAED's relationships to open Saudi and GCC market access for portfolio companies.

Sector Focus

RAED invests across nine stated focus areas: FinTech, E-commerce, Logistics, EdTech, Digital Health, Enterprise Solutions, Entertainment, RetailTech, and AI/ML applied to SaaS, marketplace, and aggregator business models. In practice, the portfolio skews heavily fintech and e-commerce/marketplace, with a growing recent tilt toward AI infrastructure and AI-native SaaS (Think, Deep.sa, Nuet, Signit, ClearGrid).

Stage Focus

RAED is an early-stage investor, concentrating on pre-seed and seed, with continued participation through Series A and selective Series B follow-ons for winning portfolio companies (e.g., Rize's $35M Series A, Unifonic's $125M Series B from SoftBank, Sary's $75M Series C). New first checks are most commonly pre-seed through Series A.

Check Size

Public reporting on RAED's ticket size is inconsistent; the firm does not disclose a standard range on its site. Cross-referenced third-party data points to an approximate $500K-$3M typical initial check for pre-seed/seed rounds, scaling meaningfully higher (co-lead tickets into eight-figure rounds) for later-stage follow-ons in standout portfolio companies. Confidence on exact check size bounds is moderate.

Lead Tendency

RAED frequently leads or co-leads rounds it participates in, including Signit's $15M Series A (2026), Rize's $35M Series A (2025), and Think's $8M+ pre-seed (2026, co-led with Wa'ed Ventures). It also participates as a non-lead investor in some rounds (e.g., Aya's earlier $1.6M seed).

Recent Activity

RAED has been active through 2025 and into 2026:

• July 2026: Co-led Think's $8M+ pre-seed, described as MENA's largest AI infrastructure/deeptech pre-seed round, alongside Wa'ed Ventures.
• April 2026: Led Signit's $15M Series A for AI-powered contract lifecycle management, with STV, Seedra Ventures, Takamol Ventures, and Suhail Ventures participating.
• April 2026: Led Aya's $7M Series A for its data-driven fashion platform, with Nuwa Capital, Sanabil Investments (PIF), Joa Capital, and Khwarizmi Ventures participating.
• March 2025: Co-led (with Beco Capital, pre-seed; and Nuwa Capital, seed) ClearGrid's $10M combined raise for AI-powered debt collection in MENA.
• January 2025: Led Rize's $35M Series A (equity and debt) for its rent-now-pay-later proptech platform.
• The firm expanded its venture partner bench in early-to-late 2025, adding H.H. Prince Khalid Bin Bader Al Saud (Feb 2025), Abdulrahman Alfozan (Feb 2025), and Kushal Shah as Growth Venture Partner (Oct 2025), the latter a former e& (Etisalat) CVC lead who deployed $180M across 2022-2025.

Portfolio Highlights

RAED's portfolio spans roughly 56 companies since 2015. Notable outcomes include one unicorn (Tabby, MENA's largest BNPL platform, raised at a $300M+ valuation with later rounds pushing well past unicorn status), an IPO (SWVL, which listed via SPAC), and multiple acquisitions (Tweeq, Crowd Analyzer, Eventtus, Melltoo) plus additional exits (Trukker, Syarah). Other flagship names include Salla (e-commerce enablement), Mrsool (on-demand delivery), Foodics (restaurant tech/enterprise software), Unifonic (CPaaS, raised $125M Series B from SoftBank), Sary (B2B marketplace, $75M Series C), Lean Technologies (fintech infrastructure), and Bayzat (HR/insurance enterprise software).

Team

• Omar Almajdouie, Founding Partner — 20+ years in senior leadership and venture investing.
• Saed Nashef, Founding Partner — 20+ years in venture capital; co-founder of Sadara Ventures.
• Talal Alasmari, Founding Partner — 15+ years in the startup ecosystem; serial entrepreneur.
• Wael Nafee, General Partner — 20+ years in product/design; Careem veteran.
• Kushal Shah, Growth Venture Partner — Cambridge-trained economist and chartered accountant, 20+ years at strategy consulting firms before leading e&'s corporate VC fund (deployed $180M, 2022-2025); co-founder of Dubai Angel Investors.
• H.H. Prince Khalid Bin Bader Al Saud, Venture Partner — joined February 2025; also a founder of portfolio company ClearGrid.
• Abdulrahman Alfozan, Venture Partner — MIT-trained; Founding Engineer at Nash, prior senior engineering roles at Meta, Microsoft, and SAP.
• Investment team: Yomna Abousamra (Senior Associate), Uday Singh, Waleed Abdelshafy, and Abdulrahman Alhashim (Investment Associates).
• Notable advisors include Seth Levine (Foundry Group co-founder), Abdulla Elyas (Careem co-founder), and Tino Waked (Uber's former Regional GM for the Middle East).

Decision Process

RAED operates with a multi-partner structure (three founding partners, one general partner, three venture partners, plus an investment team), consistent with a partnership-style decision process rather than a solo-GP model.

Founder Preferences

RAED emphasizes backing "exceptional founders" building companies with regional scalability, and explicitly ties its mandate to job creation and women's empowerment as social-impact outcomes alongside financial returns. The firm publicly accepts direct applications via an "Apply" page on its site, suggesting inbound access is not strictly limited to warm introductions.

Geographic Focus

RAED is squarely MENA-focused, with the heaviest concentration in Saudi Arabia and the broader GCC (UAE, Bahrain), and meaningful exposure to Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan. A small number of portfolio companies are US- or Sweden-based, likely reflecting follow-on participation in globally-relevant AI/infrastructure plays (e.g., Vectara, Bloompath, Nuet) rather than a core geographic thesis shift.