Saudi-based retail technology startup Raff has closed a $1.7 million pre-seed funding round, led by Vision Ventures, as it looks to simplify how consumer brands move from online commerce into physical retail across the GCC.

The round also saw participation from 500 Global, Palm VC, Oqal Group, and several angel investors, including Salman Butt, Co-founder of Saudi e-commerce platform Salla.

Raff plans to use the fresh capital to accelerate its expansion across the GCC, develop its product and strengthen its AI capabilities as it builds infrastructure connecting consumer brands directly with retailers.

Founded in 2024 by Ali Al Qudah and Abdul Kareem Munla, Raff has already enabled more than 900 brands across nine countries, spanning the GCC and the UK, to grow their presence through physical retail channels.

Bridging the Gap Between Online and Offline Retail

The startup is targeting a problem that has become increasingly visible as e-commerce lowers the barriers for launching consumer brands.

While digital marketplaces and platforms have made it easier for brands across the GCC to launch and sell online, entering physical retail remains significantly more fragmented.

Brands typically need to establish separate commercial relationships, onboarding processes, logistics arrangements and inventory operations with individual retailers.

Raff is building an end-to-end technology platform designed to digitize that process.

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The platform handles distribution, commercial operations, inventory management, order fulfillment and payments, giving brands a more centralized way to expand into physical stores.

For retailers, Raff automates key workflows and helps manage growing vendor networks while integrating with leading point-of-sale and accounting software used across the region.

The company is targeting a significant opportunity, with the GCC retail market valued at more than $300 billion annually.

More Than 900 Brands Across Nine Countries

Raff’s early traction has extended beyond its home market.

Less than 18 months after launching, the platform has worked with more than 900 consumer brands across nine countries, including markets across the GCC and the UK.

The model is designed to provide the technology and operational infrastructure brands need to move from predominantly online businesses into omnichannel companies with a physical retail presence.

The name Raff itself — the Arabic word for “shelf” — reflects the company’s focus on helping brands reach physical points of sale.

“Our mission is to simplify that journey and give brands a faster and more efficient way to reach offline customers,” said Ali Al Qudah, Co-Founder and CEO of Raff.

“This investment enables us to accelerate that vision, expand across the GCC, and continue building the infrastructure powering the next generation of retail.”

Founders Bring E-Commerce, Technology and Finance Experience

Raff was founded by Al Qudah and Munla, combining experience across e-commerce, technology, financial management and business operations.

Before launching Raff, Al Qudah built and scaled two e-commerce brands. He later joined Salla as an early employee before serving as Head of Growth at Saudi legal-tech startup Qanoniah.

Munla brings more than 20 years of experience in financial management and business operations, including financial transformation, governance, compliance and operational efficiency across multiple sectors.

The founders’ backgrounds give Raff experience on both sides of the challenge it is trying to address: scaling digital businesses and managing the operational infrastructure required as companies grow.

Vision Ventures Sees the Reverse of the E-Commerce Shift

For lead investor Vision Ventures, Raff represents an opportunity emerging from the next stage of the region’s e-commerce evolution.

The venture capital firm previously invested early in Salla, backing infrastructure that helped businesses move from traditional commerce into online selling.

Now, it sees a complementary opportunity as digitally native brands increasingly seek physical distribution.

“We previously supported the shift from offline to online through our early investment in Salla. Today, we see an equally significant opportunity as brands look to expand from online into physical retail,” said Kais Al-Essa, Founding Partner and CEO of Vision Ventures.

Al-Essa described Raff as creating a new efficiency layer at the intersection of retail technology and logistics.

Raff Targets GCC Expansion and AI Development

With the pre-seed round completed, Raff will focus on expanding its footprint across the GCC while continuing to develop the technology behind its distribution platform.

Part of the investment will go toward AI capabilities, alongside broader product development intended to automate more of the processes connecting brands, retailers, inventory and commercial operations.

The opportunity is particularly relevant as the region produces a growing number of consumer brands that have built their initial customer bases through e-commerce and social platforms but face a more complicated path into offline distribution.

Rather than requiring each brand to recreate those relationships and processes independently, Raff aims to provide a shared infrastructure layer connecting them with physical retailers.

Having already facilitated physical retail expansion for more than 900 brands across nine countries, the startup will now use its $1.7 million round to test whether that infrastructure can scale across the wider GCC and eventually become a key link between the region’s online and offline retail economies.

Nvidia is reportedly in talks over a potential acquisition of Rebellions, the South Korean AI semiconductor startup valued at $2.3 billion and backed by Saudi Aramco’s venture capital arm, Wa’ed Ventures.

The potential transaction would bring one of Asia’s rapidly growing AI chip startups into Nvidia’s portfolio at a time when demand for specialized computing infrastructure is expanding beyond AI training into inference and reasoning workloads.

Rebellions develops AI processors designed primarily for data centers and has expanded commercially across South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Japan and the United States.

The discussions come as Rebellions is also preparing for a potential initial public offering, creating two possible paths for the company as it enters its next stage of growth.

From $1.4 Billion to $2.3 Billion Valuation

Rebellions has raised more than $850 million in total funding as investors increase their exposure to companies developing alternatives and complementary technologies within the global AI semiconductor market.

In 2025, the company raised $250 million in Series C funding at a $1.4 billion valuation, with participation from major semiconductor and technology companies including Samsung, SK Hynix and Arm.

Its valuation subsequently climbed to $2.3 billion following a $400 million funding round in March 2026.

The capital has supported Rebellions as it develops chips optimized for AI workloads and expands into international markets.

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Saudi Aramco Backed Rebellions’ Expansion Into the Kingdom

Rebellions also has a notable connection to Saudi Arabia through Wa’ed Ventures, the venture capital arm backed by Saudi Aramco.

Wa’ed Ventures invested $15 million in Rebellions in July 2024, with the investment supporting the semiconductor company’s expansion into Saudi Arabia.

The move gave Saudi capital exposure to one of the most strategically important layers of the AI economy: the semiconductor infrastructure required to run increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence models.

Rebellions has since developed a commercial presence in the Kingdom alongside operations and customers in other major international markets.

For Saudi Arabia, the potential Nvidia transaction could also highlight a broader investment strategy in which Saudi-backed funds are gaining early exposure to international companies building critical AI infrastructure.

Why Rebellions Could Matter to Nvidia

Rebellions specializes in chips targeting AI inference and reasoning, areas becoming increasingly important as artificial intelligence moves from training large models toward deploying them at scale.

Training remains extraordinarily compute-intensive, but the rapid adoption of generative and agentic AI is also increasing demand for processors capable of efficiently running models and executing inference workloads inside data centers.

A potential acquisition could therefore give Nvidia additional specialized capabilities as competition intensifies across the AI semiconductor industry.

For Rebellions, joining Nvidia would represent a dramatically different route from proceeding independently toward the public markets.

IPO Plans Now Face a Potential Alternative

Rebellions has been preparing for an initial public offering, but acquisition discussions with Nvidia could potentially alter that trajectory if negotiations result in a transaction.

No completed acquisition has been announced, and the discussions therefore remain a potential deal rather than a confirmed transaction.

The outcome will be closely watched given Rebellions’ rapid increase in valuation, substantial institutional backing and strategic position in AI semiconductor infrastructure.

Saudi Capital Moves Deeper Into the Global AI Stack

The Rebellions story also illustrates how Saudi investment is increasingly moving beyond applications and software into the underlying infrastructure powering artificial intelligence.

Through its investment in Rebellions, Wa’ed Ventures backed a semiconductor company before its valuation reached its current $2.3 billion level and as it was beginning to establish a stronger presence in the Kingdom.

If Nvidia ultimately acquires Rebellions, the transaction would place an Aramco-backed AI chipmaker at the center of one of the global semiconductor industry’s most closely watched strategic moves.

More broadly, Rebellions’ expansion into Saudi Arabia connects South Korea’s semiconductor ecosystem with the Kingdom’s rapidly growing ambitions around AI infrastructure, data centers and advanced computing.

With Nvidia now reportedly considering an acquisition while Rebellions simultaneously prepares for an IPO, the next step could determine whether the $2.3 billion startup continues its independent expansion or becomes part of the world’s dominant AI computing company.

Verascient, a promising South African artificial intelligence startup, has successfully raised $1.2 million in its inaugural funding round.

The finance round, which was oversubscribed, highlights growing confidence in Verascient’s innovative solution of transforming disparate corporate knowledge into a coherent context for AI agents.

The round saw participation from prominent investors like Founder Collective, known for backing big names such as Uber and Airtable, as well as Andrena Ventures, Cambridge Enterprise, and Summit Ventures.

Angel investors Alan Knott-Craig and Shayne Mann also contributed to the round.

Founded by the dynamic duo Emile Ferreira and Keagan Stokoe, Verascient is pioneering in the sphere of intelligent business operations by working inside client organizations to unify information spread across various platforms like documents, emails, and internal systems.

This knowledge is then harnessed to create workflows and AI agents, aimed at making daily operations more intelligent and efficient.

The startup initially aims to target sectors such as financial services, insurance, and logistics, industries known for their vast amounts of siloed data and the potential to benefit greatly from Verascient’s offerings.

Innovative Infrastructure and AI Capabilities

Verascient’s core comprises a robust temporal knowledge graph, an innovative technology that maintains a holistic view of an organization’s data while preserving historical information, permissions, and provenance.

According to Ferreira, who spearheads technological efforts at Verascient, businesses often provide AI tools to employees without the adequate infrastructure necessary for intelligent operations.

Verascient bridges this gap by collaborating directly with enterprises to understand and optimize their processes, thus facilitating AI agents to operate effectively within existing frameworks.

The startup’s approach emphasizes revenue-related activities, operations, customer experiences, decision-making, and delivery aspects.

By continually refining its systems, Verascient ensures each improvement makes subsequent enhancements easier to achieve, creating a compounding effect as highlighted by Stokoe.

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Central to Verascient’s model is the seamless integration of their infrastructure with the expertise of in-house AI engineers. This team is designed to work closely with clients to ensure the effective deployment of AI solutions.

Stokoe emphasizes the need for professionals who not only understand complex technologies but also grasp the practicalities of implementing them in everyday business scenarios.

Founders with Vision and Expertise

Emile Ferreira, Verascient’s CTO, has a rich background in AI innovation, having taught himself to code at 12 and subsequently contributing significantly to Replit, a tech company valued above $9 billion. His early creation of an on-device AI assistant attracted over 200,000 users, earning him an innovation award.

With a distinguished academic record, Ferreira completed his MPhil in Advanced Computer Science from Cambridge, co-authoring significant research with global entities like the United Nations.

Keagan Stokoe, a key member of South Africa’s tech ecosystem, played a crucial role in establishing Fibertime, serving over 1.5 million monthly users.

His endeavor, Purple Dorm, served as an AI consultancy for organizations in multiple regions, including South Africa and the UK.

Now, with the newly-acquired funding, Verascient plans to bolster its engineering department and expand its technological capabilities to support more enterprise level AI deployments.

Stokoe expressed the company’s aim to recruit the top 1% of AI engineering talent from South Africa to propel Verascient’s growth trajectory.