Presight-Shorooq AI fund deploys capital in five companies
Portfolio includes NodeShift, Candid, Hebbia, Blue and Crunched
#UAE #funding– Abu Dhabi-based Presight-Shorooq Fund I, a $100 million global AI innovation fund launched in September 2025, has invested in five AI start-ups across US and UAE markets in its first quarter. Portfolio companies now include Abu Dhabi sovereign cloud platform NodeShift, San Francisco vertical AI companies Candid and Crunched, New York enterprise AI platform Hebbia, and San Francisco voice AI company Blue. The strategic partnership between Abu Dhabi multi-strategy investment firm Shorooq and ADX-listed AI and big data analytics company Presight, assessed over 1,000 companies before deploying capital in the initial cohort.
SO WHAT? – The fund fulfills its mandate to connect the world’s most promising AI companies with the UAE’s premier sovereign infrastructure and broader MENA capital ecosystem. The fund and the associated Presight AI-Startup Accelerator create clear pathways from innovation to implementation by translating frontier AI into intelligent systems at scale. The portfolio spans companies addressing critical gaps including NodeShift’s sovereign cloud platform offering GPU workloads up to 65% cheaper than public clouds, Candid’s AI agent reducing engineering construction bidding preparation time by 10x, and Blue’s action model enabling hands-free command execution across mobile applications.
Here are some key points about the fund’s new investments:
Presight-Shorooq Fund I, a $100 million global AI innovation fund launched by G42 group company Presight and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm Shorooq in September 2025, has invested in five AI start-ups across US and UAE markets in its first quarter.
Portfolio companies are backed by firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Google Ventures, Quiet Capital, First Round Capital and Y Combinator, alongside angel investors including Yann LeCun, Paul Graham and Peter Thiel.
The five AI startups that were allocated funding are as follows:
NodeShift is building the first AI-native sovereign cloud platform designed to replace fragmented legacy infrastructure, consolidating virtualization, cloud management and AI stack into single Rust-based platform with true air-gap system for high-security clients removing foreign telemetry and dependencies.
Candid’s AI agent collapses pre-construction bidding phase for engineering, procurement and construction firms, reducing preparation time from 12 weeks to 1-2 weeks whilst tightening bid error margins from ±25% to ±10%, unlocking 2x revenue potential by enabling higher volume of profitable bids.
Hebbia’s enterprise-grade AI platform handles complex knowledge work in finance, law and government through Matrix interface acting as collaborative AI agent that can ingest millions of pages of private data to perform end-to-end analysis with citation-backed verification.
Blue develops the first functional action model for mobile designed to bypass traditional app API limitations by directly simulating mouse and keyboard control over user interface. It uses a patent-pending USB-C hardware dongle enabling real-time on-device large language model inference.
Crunched operates as AI-powered Excel analyst for consulting and investment finance power users, auditing complex financial models for errors. It pulls data from web or PDFs into templates and building analyses from scratch, with early users reporting productivity boosts over 2x.
Portfolio companies benefit from capital alongside access to Presight’s AI infrastructure and G42 ecosystem as well as Shorooq’s track record in scaling start-ups, exemplifying UAE’s growing role as hub for AI innovation connecting regional resources with global entrepreneurial talent.
ZOOM OUT – Launched in September 2025, the Presight-Shorooq Fund builds on Presight’s AI-Startup Accelerator, first announced at Expand North Star 2024 in Dubai. Now onboarding its second cohort, the three-month programme targets early-stage AI start-ups with prototypes or minimum viable products from MENA, South-East Asia and Central Asia. Selected start-ups receive mentoring, AI-specific technological resources, high-performance computing, cloud services and access to foundational language models and algorithms. With backing of Presight and the G42 Group, the accelerator helps AI start-ups refine business models and achieve market fit before scaling. The Presight-Shorooq Fund I extends this ecosystem support by providing capital alongside infrastructure access.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
Read more about the fund and Presight AI-Startup Accelerator:
Presight appoints global Advisory Board for $100M AI fund (Middle East AI News)
Presight & Shorooq launch $100 million AI fund (Middle East AI News)
Presight AI-Startup Accelerator holds first bootcamp (Middle East AI News)
Presight selects 10 AI startups to join accelerator (Middle East AI News)
Deadline approaches for Presight AI startup accelerator (Middle East AI News)