Saudi AI Startup Mozn Raises $10M

Investments

Enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) solutions startup Mozn has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round, the Saudi company said in a news release Friday (Feb. 4).

Founded in 2017, Mozn helps enterprises to “make better mission-critical decisions through AI products and solutions that leverage its proprietary state-of-the-art Arabic Natural Language Understanding (NLU) platform, as well as its cutting-edge risk and fraud engine,” the firm said.

NLU allows machines to read and process text-allowing applications like information extraction, text summarization, text classification and question-answering, with better bandwidth and precision than manual processing.

Mozn said in a statement it will use the funds to enhance the NLU engine and unlock use cases that previously would not have been possible for the 2 billion people worldwide speaking Arabic and other related languages.

The company says it also recently launched a Focal Anti-Money Laundering suite, designed to help financial institutions and governments deal with financial crimes. Mozn says it’s an industry that represents more $200 billion worth of opportunities worldwide

The funding round was led by Raed Ventures with participation from Shorooq Partners, VentureSouq, Sukna Ventures, as well as strategic investors.

Read more: Venture Capital Investment in Saudi Firms on the Rise

The funding comes at a time when venture capital investment in Saudi Arabia is on the rise, as PYMNTS reported recently.

Figures from a recent report on the venture capital and startup ecosystems in the country showed total VC investment in startups in Saudi Arabia by the end of the third quarter (Q3) of 2021 was already more than double the amount was invested in the 2020 financial year.

And according to the Q3 KSA Venture Investment Report by data platform Magnitt, put together in collaboration with the Saudi Venture Capital Company, VC investments in startups based in the kingdom more than quadrupled in Q3 2021, versus the same period in 2020.

Overall, startups attracted some $205 million in 34 funding deals during the period, most of which were concentrated in the country’s FinTech sector.