Saudi Arabia-headquartered AI startup Intella has closed an oversubscribed $12.5 million Series A round led by Prosus, with participation from 500 Global, Wa’ed Ventures, Hala Ventures, Idrisi Ventures, and HearstLab. This latest round brings Intella’s total funding to $16.9 million, following a $3.4 million pre-Series A in 2023 and $1 million in seed funding in 2022.
Founded in Egypt in 2021 by CEO Nour Taher and CTO Omar Mansour, Intella builds AI tools tailored for Arabic dialects, covering more than 25 variations. Its proprietary speech-to-text engine has achieved 95.73% accuracy, outperforming Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Watson on Arabic transcription benchmarks.
“Models have historically underperformed due to dialect complexity and limited access to data. Intella is changing that,” said Robin Voogd, Head of Middle East Investments at Prosus Ventures. “We’re backing its mission to build AI locally for the Arabic-speaking world.”
The startup has doubled revenue in 2024 and forecasts sevenfold growth in 2025, driven by clients in finance, telecoms, and government. It also recently launched Ziila, an Arabic-born digital human, with Jumia to enable voice ordering—demonstrating real-world resilience in handling dialect complexity.
With the new funding, Intella plans to boost R&D, expand both Ziila and its IntellaCX analytics platform, and grow its go-to-market teams in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The investment positions the company to become a regional leader in AI solutions built natively for Arabic speakers.
