Orbii Raises $3.6M to Transform SME Lending with AI in MENA

Saudi Arabian fintech Orbii has just clinched a USD 3.6 million seed round, with a hefty lead from Prosus Ventures and backers like VentureSouq, Dash Ventures, Taz Investments, and Sanabil 500 jumping onboard. That’s a solid chunk of change for a startup that only sprang to life early in 2024, but it seems the appetite for AI-powered SME lending solutions isn’t slowing down anytime soon across the MENA region.

Orbii’s main aim is pretty ambitious—they want to enable USD 1 billion in loans for small and medium businesses by 2026. Not exactly pocket change! According to what’s been published, this money won’t just sit pretty in the company’s bank account. Instead, Orbii plans to put it straight to work, expanding its engineering and data science squads, diving deeper into technical integration with a raft of financial systems across the Middle East, and strengthening its presence both in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

What actually sets Orbii apart is its approach to using artificial intelligence to streamline the entire lending workflow for SMEs. In plain English: they let banks, fintechs, and B2B platforms offer credit to small businesses, embedded directly inside whatever system those businesses already use—whether that’s a cash till, an ERP, or a digital banking channel. From Arageek’s side of the fence, I reckon the beauty here is in minimising all that paperwork and the faff of manual checks. Instead, lenders can instantly approve loans, meaning decisions move at the speed of business rather than getting bogged down in bureaucracy. That’s spot on for the MENA start-up scene, where access to finance is still, let’s be honest, a proper headache for many.

Nauman Ali, Orbii’s CEO and co-founder, pitched it best: “We envision a MENA where every business can access credit instantly, embedded within the systems and workflows they already use. Credit decisioning won’t be a process, it’ll be a reflex.” That’s the sort of vision that chimes well with the push for digital empowerment—something, I must say, we see startups here striving for every day.

If you look under the bonnet, Orbii is hoping their machine learning models will outdo the slower, riskier manual ways of evaluating creditworthiness. By tapping into real-time company data, the idea is to improve loan approval quality and avoid those pesky defaults that can haunt lenders for years.

Getting to this stage in the regional fintech world is no walk in the park. It’s often a bit of a bumpy ride—regulations, legacy systems, you name it. Still, it’s chuffed to bits to see another Saudi startup making waves, not just dreaming big but actually building the pipes to get more funds flowing to under-served SMEs, especially with their feet firmly planted in the MENA soil. That said, scaling up and landing USD 1 billion in approved loans will be another kettle of fish entirely.

There’s plenty happening in this space lately, and as Orbii looks set to keep growing in Saudi and the UAE, other founders across the region may well be watching closely—and, who knows, perhaps feeling a little inspired to take the plunge themselves. But, as always, only time will tell if Orbii’s clever modelling will be enough to tip the balance for SME credit in this corner of the world. Still, from where I’m sitting, it’s definately one to keep an eye on.

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