Arabic speech pioneer secures $12.5m Series A funding
Prosus leads oversubscribed round for Intella's MENA expansion
#UAE #funding - Riyadh-based speech intelligence company Intella has secured $12.5 million in an oversubscribed Series A round led by Dutch investment firm Prosus Ventures. The new funding round also saw participation from global venture capital fund 500 Global, Saudi investor Idrisi Ventures, US media conglomerate's investment arm HearstLab, plus existing Intella investors Wa'ed Ventures, and Al-Khobar-based Hala Ventures, The funding will accelerate the company’s development of AI models tailored to over 25 Arabic dialects, enhance enterprise capabilities and drive regional expansion across the Middle East and North Africa.
SO WHAT? - Following the AI speech company’s $3.4 million Pre-Series AI round in 2023, the new $12.5 million funding validates Intella’s strategic move to Saudi Arabia and the potential of the Arabic speech technology market. Global AI models have so far underperformed in Arabic language processing due to the complexity of dialectal variations, while most Arabic AI development has focused on text, not speech. Intella's 95.73% accuracy rate in Arabic speech recognition positions it to capture significant market share in an underserved sector.
Here are some key points about this announcement:
Egypt and Saudi Arabia-based speech intelligence company Intella has announced a $12.5 million Series A round led by Dutch investment firm Prosus Ventures. with participation from 500 Global, Idrisi Ventures, HearstLab, plus existing Intella investors Wa'ed Ventures, and Hala Ventures,
Intella's proprietary Arabic speech-to-text models achieved a global record accuracy rate of 95.73%, outperforming established global competitors.
The company more than doubled revenue in 2024 and projects seven-fold growth in 2025, demonstrating strong commercial traction across finance, telecommunications and government sectors.
Founded in 2021 by CEO Nour Taher and CTO Omar Mansour, Intella specialises in enterprise-grade transcription, analytics and AI-powered customer engagement tools for more than 25 Arabic dialects.
The Series A round brings total funding raised to over $16.9 million, following a $3.4 million pre-Series A round led by Hala Ventures and Wa'ed Ventures (Hala being the original Seed round investor).
Intella recently launched Ziila, its Arabic-born digital human, in partnership with Africa's largest e-commerce platform Jumia for voice-ordering functionality.
The funding will support expansion of go-to-market teams in Egypt and Saudi Arabia to meet accelerating demand from enterprise clients.
Arabic presents unique AI challenges with over 25 primary dialects and numerous sub-dialects, as Modern Standard Arabic is rarely used in everyday speech.
The company plans to integrate its conversational AI agent Ziila with existing intellaCX analytics products to create a comprehensive enterprise suite.
ZOOM OUT - Announced in July, Intella's partnership with Jumia Egypt delivered the first commercially deployed Arabic voice commerce system, allowing customers to complete shopping transactions using natural Egyptian dialect through the Ziila assistant. This breakthrough deployment on Jumia's platform, which serves over eight million customers across Africa and generated more than $1 billion in gross merchandise value in 2022, highlights the huge opportunity for deploying Arabic-first AI technology at scale. Intella now plans to integrate the Ziila AI assistant with its intellaCX platform. With over 400 million Arabic speakers, there is fast-growing demand for voice-enabled services in markets where speaking is preferred over typing.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
Read more about recent Saudi AI startup funding rounds:
Saudi AI startup DEEP.SA secures $1.2m Pre-Seed (Middle East AI News)
Saudi AI voice startup Sawt raises $1 million funding (Middle East AI News)
Wittify.ai raises $1.5M Pre-Seed funding for Arabic AI (Middle East AI News)
Lucidya raises $30M in Saudi Arabia's biggest AI round (Middle East AI News)
Riyadh-based Darwinz AI secures $325k Seed round (Middle East AI News)
TruBuild raises $1 million Seed Round (Middle East AI News)