Saudi Fintech Startup Abwab.ai Secures $4 Million Seed Investment
Saudi fintech company Abwab.ai has raised 15 million riyals, roughly 4 million dollars, in a seed round led by European venture capital firm Speedinvest, as it looks to expand its lending infrastructure for small and medium-sized businesses.
Middle East Venture Partners also joined the round, according to a company statement, which noted the deal marks Speedinvest’s first investment in Saudi Arabia. Riyadh-based Abwab.ai said financial institutions already using its technology have processed more than 10 billion riyals in SME loans across more than 10 institutions in the Kingdom.
Founded in 2023, Abwab.ai doesn’t lend to businesses directly. Instead, it builds technology that allows banks, finance companies and other lenders to automate and scale their own SME lending operations, covering the full cycle from onboarding and origination through credit assessment, disbursement, servicing, billing, collections and recovery.
The investment lands as Saudi Arabia works toward raising SMEs’ contribution to gross domestic product to 35 percent under Vision 2030, up from a baseline of around 20 percent, with expanded access to credit viewed as central to reaching that target.
Baraa Koshak, founder and CEO of Abwab.ai, said Saudi Arabia has already made significant progress in expanding SME finance, and that the next stage is about giving financial institutions the infrastructure needed to keep that growth going efficiently. He said small and medium-sized businesses represent one of the largest segments of the Kingdom’s economy, yet a substantial financing gap remains, and described the company’s role as building technology that lets lenders assess, serve and manage far more businesses than they could otherwise. He added that Speedinvest’s investment reflects the fact that technology built in Riyadh is addressing a genuinely global problem: getting SMEs faster access to credit.
The funding also comes against the backdrop of the Saudi Cabinet’s decision in March to designate 2026 the Year of AI, part of a broader push to encourage AI adoption across economic sectors, technology entrepreneurship, and the development of a data- and AI-driven economy.
Saudi Arabia is home to more than 1.7 million small and medium-sized enterprises, employing around 8.8 million people and contributing 22.9 percent of GDP in 2024. Under Vision 2030, the government aims to lift that contribution to 35 percent by 2030. Abwab.ai said smaller business loans have historically required heavy manual assessment and servicing, making them costly for lenders to handle at scale, a gap the company’s technology is designed to close. Its current customers include Abdul Latif Jameel Finance, Kafalah, Hala and Lendo, the financial institutions whose combined use of the platform has processed more than 10 billion riyals in SME loans to date.
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