Saudi Fintech Abwab.ai Secures SAR 15 Million Investment From Speedinvest to Scale AI-powered SME Lending Solutions
Saudi fintech Abwab.ai has raised SAR 15 million ($4 million) in a seed round led by Speedinvest, a globally active European venture capital firm with more than €1.2 billion under management, with participation from Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP).
The round marks Speedinvest’s first investment in Saudi Arabia and follows the latest milestone from Abwab.ai wherein they processed more than SAR 10 billion ($2.7 billion) in SME loans through its technology from more than 10 financial institutions in the Kingdom. The investment is a testament to Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation, as the Kingdom works toward increasing the contribution of SMEs to GDP to 35% by 2030, the continued growth of SME financing and their contribution to the economy is increasingly dependent on their access to timely institutional finance.
Saudi Arabia now has more than 1.7 million SMEs employing approximately 8.8 million people and contributing 22.9% of GDP. As the SME sector grows, the ability of financial institutions to assess, service and manage significantly larger volumes of SME credit efficiently and sustainably remains a challenge.
Rather than lending directly to businesses, Abwab.ai provides the technology used by banks, finance companies and other financial institutions to operate SME lending at scale. Its customers include Abdul Latif Jameel Finance, Kafalah, Hala and Lendo, with the financial institutions that use the platform having processed more than SAR 10 billion in SME loans.
The investment comes during Saudi Arabia’s Year of Artificial Intelligence 2026, which places greater national emphasis on the adoption of AI across economic sectors, technology entrepreneurship and the development of a data- and AI-driven economy.
The convergence of SME growth, financial-sector digitisation and applied AI opens the spave for Abwab.ai to build the technology layer that can enable established financial institutions to service a growing SME economy.
“Saudi Arabia has already made significant progress in expanding SME finance. The next stage is about giving financial institutions the infrastructure to continue that growth efficiently,” said Baraa Koshak, Founder and CEO of Abwab.ai.
He added, “SMEs represent one of the largest parts of our business economy, yet the financing opportunity remains substantial in the Kingdom. Our role is to build the technology that allows lenders and financial institutions to assess, serve and manage significantly more businesses. Speedinvest’s investment is a testament that our technology, while built in Riyadh, solves a global issue, which is quick access to credit for SMEs.”
Abwab.ai was founded in Riyadh in 2023 to address a structural problem in SME finance, smaller business loans have traditionally required significant manual assessment and servicing, making them comparatively expensive for financial institutions to originate and manage at scale.
The technology allows financial institutions to manage the complete lifecycle of an SME loan through one technology stack, from onboarding, origination and credit assessment through disbursement, servicing, billing, collections and recovery. Institutions can deploy the complete platform or integrate individual components into their existing technology infrastructure.
Abwab.ai aims to become the infrastructure layer through which financial institutions can expand SME lending while improving the speed, scalability and economics of the lending process.
