When Andreessen Horowitz writes its first check in the Gulf, you pay attention. Not because Middle Eastern startups lack promise—plenty do—but because the firm has, until now, treated the region as someone else's frontier. That changed in May 2026 when a16z led a $25 million Series A round for Stitch, a Riyadh-based banking software company barely four years old.
The investment marks something of a watershed. For years, U.S. venture heavyweights have circled the Gulf Cooperation Council with polite curiosity but little follow-through. Andreessen's move suggests that calculus may be shifting, driven less by speculative enthusiasm than by cold pragmatism: Saudi Arabia alone is chartering hundreds of new financial institutions, and someone needs to build the rails.
"We are honored to make this our first investment in the region," the firm said in a statement released the day before the deal was announced. Alex Rampell, an a16z partner who has made his name backing fintech infrastructure plays, called the Middle East a "greenfield opportunity"—venture-speak for wide open territory.
Stitch was founded in 2022, and its founder, Mohamed Oueida, has been building toward this moment since then, though perhaps not on quite this timeline. The company's pitch is straightforward: traditional banking infrastructure in the Gulf—and much of the developing world—is a patchwork of legacy systems that can't keep pace with digital demands. Stitch offers what it calls an "operating system for modern financial institutions," an API-first platform covering everything from core ledgers to card issuance, loan origination, and deposit management.
The idea is that banks and financial institutions can swap in modules incrementally rather than endure the chaos of a full system overhaul. Oueida, whose team includes veterans of NPCI, FIS, Barclays, Santander, and Azentio, has been blunt about the stakes. "AI on top of broken infrastructure is a dead end," he said in announcing the funding. It's a pointed argument in an era when every financial institution claims to be racing toward machine learning and automation.
The Customers
Stitch's client roster offers a window into where Gulf finance is headed. Raya Financing, the Saudi lending arm for Hyundai and Peugeot dealers, is using the platform to digitize auto leasing and small-business products. LuLu Exchange, the UAE-based remittance giant, launched multi-currency cards on Stitch's infrastructure. Foodics and Noqodi, both regional players with sprawling operations, are also onboard.
The company says it processed more than $5 billion in transactions over the six months leading up to the announcement. It also claims 10x customer growth and 20x revenue growth through 2025, though these are company-reported figures and haven't been independently audited. (Startups at this stage rarely offer that kind of transparency, but it's worth noting.)
Stitch now operates across the GCC and has expanded into Egypt, Kenya, and parts of Southeast Asia. Office locations listed on its website span Riyadh, Dammam, Jeddah, Bahrain, Dubai, Chennai, Bengaluru, New York, and Beijing—a footprint that suggests ambitions well beyond the Gulf.
The Backers
The Series A brought Stitch's total funding to $35 million since inception. Joining Andreessen Horowitz were Arbor Ventures, COTU Ventures, Raed Ventures, and Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC), the same group that led the company's $10 million seed round a year earlier. That earlier round, announced in May 2025, was modest by Silicon Valley standards but substantial for a region where venture capital remains unevenly distributed.
What's striking is the mix. SVC brings the imprimatur of Saudi state backing; Raed and COTU are regional specialists with deep networks in Middle Eastern tech. Arbor and a16z anchor the deal with Silicon Valley credibility. It's the kind of syndicate that signals serious institutional intent.
What Happens Next
The fresh capital will fund what you'd expect: accelerated product development, deeper market penetration across the Gulf and broader Middle East, and expanded global sales operations. The timing couldn't be better—or more competitive. Banking modernization is sweeping the GCC, and Stitch is hardly alone. Established players like Temenos and Mambu have long dominated core banking software globally and are jostling for position in the Gulf. Newer entrants are proliferating, too, each promising some version of cloud-native, API-driven salvation.
Whether Stitch can carve out a defensible position remains an open question. Infrastructure plays tend to be sticky once adopted—banks don't swap out core systems lightly—but the window for establishing dominance is narrow. Oueida's bet seems to be that getting there first, or at least early enough, will matter more than anything else.
For Andreessen Horowitz, the investment is both a statement and a hedge. A statement that the Gulf is no longer someone else's backyard. A hedge that if the region's financial infrastructure does modernize at the pace Saudi planners envision, having a foothold now will look prescient in hindsight.
And if it doesn't? Well, $25 million won't make or break a firm with billions under management. But it will have been an interesting experiment.
