Egyptian AI startup Intella has raised $12.5 million in an oversubscribed Series A round, positioning itself at the forefront of Arabic-language artificial intelligence. The funding underscores Egypt’s growing role as a hub for cutting-edge AI tailored to regional linguistic and cultural contexts.
Breakthrough in Arabic Speech Recognition
Founded in 2021 by CEO Nour Taher and CTO Omar Mansour, Intella has developed proprietary speech-to-text models achieving 95.73% accuracy across more than 25 Arabic dialects—a global benchmark in addressing Arabic’s phonetic diversity. This innovation solves a challenge where many global AI players struggle, as regional dialects often diverge significantly from Modern Standard Arabic.
Strategic Industry Applications
Intella’s technology serves clients across finance, telecommunications, and government, transforming voice interactions into actionable enterprise insights. Its tools—ranging from transcript analytics to conversational agents—demonstrate the value of regionally contextualized AI for MENA markets.
The Series A round was led by Prosus Ventures, with participation from 500 Global, Wa’ed Ventures (Aramco’s VC arm), Hala Ventures, Idrisi Ventures, and HearstLab, highlighting investor confidence in Africa’s AI innovation.
Rapid Growth and New Products
With revenues more than doubling in 2024 and projections of up to 7× growth in 2025, Intella is scaling quickly. The new funding will accelerate development of:
- intellaCX – an analytics platform for deeper customer experience insights.
- Ziila – a digital human for conversational and voice-ordering applications.
Regional Expansion and Global Relevance
Intella plans to expand operations in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, bringing localized AI to markets where global models underperform. With total funding now at $16.9 million, the company is pioneering culturally relevant AI interfaces for Arabic-speaking communities.
By solving challenges global firms have not, Intella demonstrates how African startups are shaping the future of AI, with Egypt emerging as a leader in Arabic language technology.
