• Saudi Arabia-headquartered Egyptian deeptech startup Intella, has closed a $3.4 million pre-Series A funding round, led by HALA Ventures and Wa’ed Ventures, the VC arm of Aramco, with participation from Sanabil 500 and INSEAD's alumni angel network, along with other investors.
• Founded in 2021 by Nour Altaher and Omar Mansour, Intella offers real-time, on-demand market research for its business clients across diverse sectors.
• The new funding will fuel Intella’s expansion into the Saudi market and support the development of end-to-end AI models localised for Mena.
• In March 2022, Intella closed its Seed round at $1 million led by Hala Ventures, with participation from Falak Startups, Beyond Capital and others. This year, Intella relocated its HQ from Cairo to Riyadh.

Press release:

Intella, a Mena-based deeptech company, has successfully closed a $3.4 million pre-Series A funding round. 

The round was led by HALA Ventures and Wa’ed Ventures, the Kingdom-focused venture capital fund wholly owned by Aramco, with participation from Sanabil 500 and INSEAD's alumni angel network, along with other investors.

The new funding will fuel Intella’s expansion into the Saudi market and support the development of end-to-end AI models localised for the Mena region. This comes especially as they’ve made their strategic decision to relocate their headquarters, tapping into the kingdom’s growing tech and AI scene.

"Saudi Arabia is quickly becoming a hub for technological advances. This move fits perfectly with our plans for expansion," said Nour Taher, CEO and Co-founder of Intella.

As part of their ongoing efforts to refine their technology, Intella put their system through testing of over 30,000 hours of Arabic audio. Intella Voice resulted in a 95.73 per cent accuracy rate, surpassing established tech leaders like Google’s speech-to-text, Open AI’s whisper, Meta’s seamless M4T, and IBM Watson.

Omar Mansour, Co-founder and CTO of Intella, added, "Our voice technology tailored for Arabic dialects has set new industry benchmarks. And now, we're moving beyond mere transcription, and focusing on audio analytics—including summarization, sentiment analysis, topic extraction, and call scoring. We're really pushing the boundaries of what AI can do for voice in our region."

Ali Abussaud, Founding Managing Partner of HALA Ventures commented, "We're excited to back Intella's vision. They're making significant strides in connecting global AI progress with the needs of the Arab-speaking community, and it's exactly the kind of initiative the region needs right now."

Intella's mission is to bridge the gap between the Arab-speaking world and AI advancements, ensuring the region's relevance in global technological trends.

With the infusion of new funds, Intella is primed to broaden its footprint in the region, enhance its product suite, and solidify its leadership in voice technology innovation.

As the demand for specialised Arabic voice technology increases, Intella is well-positioned to address the needs of the Middle East.