• UAE-based fintech Pluto announced its emergence from stealth mode with a $6 million Seed round, led by Global Founders Capital. The round saw participation from Adapt VC, Soma Capital, Graph Ventures and OldSlip group.
• Founded in 2021 by Mohammed Ridwan, Nayeem Zen from Square and Mo Aziz, Pluto enables businesses to streamline their spending management using virtual and physical cards with specific spend controls.
• It plans to utilise the funds to improve its go-to-market strategies as well as to expand its team.

Press release:

Corporate spend management startup Pluto came out of stealth and announced its Seed round of $6m (AED 22M) led by GFC, with participation from Adapt VC, Soma Capital, Graph Ventures and OldSlip group.

The startup, which is focused on the Middle East, also caught the attention of renowned fintech investors from Silicon Valley and MENA. Among angel investors that joined the round are founders from companies such as Plaid, Airbase, and Ramp. Notable MENA founders like Abdulmajeed Alsukhan and Turki bin Zarah of Tamara as well as Hosam Arab of Tabby also contributed capital to this round.

Pluto plans to help businesses in MENA digitize cash spend while eliminating the use of employees’ personal cards, by enabling businesses to instantly issue unlimited smart corporate cards with spend controls that can be connected to existing business bank accounts.

Despite the popularity of similar solutions in other parts of the world, Pluto’s team is amongst the first to bring corporate spend management of this kind to the Middle East. The product will be first launched in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.  

Currently most businesses in the region only have access to a single debit or credit card with no spend controls, which is extremely risky to share across the entire company. As a result, businesses have to distribute cash to employees for business expenses as well as burden employees with an overwhelming amount of out-of-pocket spend.

“Businesses in the region invest hours into expense approval and tracking systems, taking valuable time away from their core tasks” explained Mo Aziz, the CEO and co-founder of Pluto. “We want to give local businesses flexible card limits paired with powerful spend management software, saving them time and money”

Aziz, a Y Combinator alumnus, has been a leading voice for MENA’s fintech ecosystem since starting his previous company Dapi, a financial data aggregator and payment protocol. For Pluto, he is joined by an impressive duo of co-founders: CPO Mohammed Ridwan from Shopify and Square - Cash App as well as CTO Nayeem Zen from Square - CashApp, Uber and Shopify. 

All three founders have a proven track record of scaling projects and building products in the B2B fintech space. Their reputation is backed by angel investors that have joined Pluto’s seed round, including senior leadership from Shopify, Alloy, Amazon, Square, Checkout and Coinbase amongst others.

The company is growing quickly, with 35+ customers in the pipeline without any marketing efforts. Pluto is also taking advantage of remote work, with its team already encompassing three different countries — UAE, Canada, and the US. 

Pluto’s team is planning to spend their capital on rapidly expanding the team in the UAE and North America to bring the product to market within a few months.