It’s Wednesday, June 24, 2026, and today’s funding tape was not a broad-based venture rebound. It was a concentrated bet on production AI: systems that make real decisions, move money, route patients, govern agents, search the live web for machines […]

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American homeowners are sitting on trillions of dollars in home equity. At the same time, many of them are still paying credit card rates north of 20% to cover everyday expenses, home repairs, medical bills, and family purchases. Trovy thinks […]

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It’s Tuesday, June 23, 2026, and the last 12 hours of startup financing did not look like a broad market rebound. They looked like a market making a narrower, harder-edged bet. Capital went to software that sits inside real operating […]

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For millions of people, braiding is part of everyday life, culture, and routine. It is one of the most common protective hairstyles in the textured hair market. It is also one of the most time-consuming salon services. A single appointment […]

The post Halo raises $7M to launch HaloBraid, a device that makes braiding 5x faster for stylists first appeared on Tech Startups.

AI is getting smarter, but for companies paying to run it, it’s getting a lot more expensive. As businesses look for ways to control rising token costs and curb unchecked AI use by developers, AI startup Engram says it has […]

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It’s Monday, June 22, 2026, and the venture market did not spend the day spraying checks across the startup stack. It did what it has been doing more often in 2026: concentrating capital into the infrastructure, semiconductor, and workflow layers […]

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Upscale AI, a startup building networking infrastructure for large AI clusters, has raised $190 million in fresh funding from backers including Nvidia and Salesforce Ventures, pushing its valuation to $2 billion as investors pour money into one of the least […]

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Sovra, the fintech platform that provides people with a global dollar account, has raised more than $2 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Pharsalus Capital, with participation from leading regional and global angel investors, including Karim Atiyeh (founder of Ramp), Hisham Al-Falih (founder of Lean Technologies), Hany Rashwan (founder of 21shares), Naguib S. Sawiris (chairman of Orascom Development Holding AG) and other angel investors.

Directly from their mobile phones, Sovra users can hold digital dollars, earn yield, send money globally in seconds, and spend with a card that works anywhere. All from a self-custodial account that can only be accessed by the user, without interference from the platform or any intermediaries. This guarantees financial access to the account and longevity beyond the platform’s.

Sovra’s self-custodial architecture means users can have complete control of their own money, and the platform serves purely as infrastructure, not gatekeepers.

The platform integrates with a robust foundation of world-leading platforms to deliver a comprehensive fintech solution to users. Dollar balances are denominated in USDC, a regulated US dollar-based stablecoin issued by Circle, an NYSE-listed SEC-regulated company, and audited by Deloitte, where one real US dollar in reserve for every digital dollar in circulation, fully verifiable.

The platform also grants users access to a range of functionality for their digital dollars,  including the ability to connect to third-party DeFi protocols that offer yield, and card payments supported across the Visa and Mastercard networks, as well as free transfers across accounts.

Two-thirds of adults across MENA remain unbanked or underbanked. In some countries, even those with bank accounts can risk inflation, currency devaluation, withdrawal limits, and the possibility of losing access to their own money. As well as slow and expensive remittances, with charges of over 6% per transfer and often taking days to arrive.

Sovra is built for everyone who earns, saves, spends, or sends money — with three initial priority segments: young professionals across MENA, university students, and the regional diaspora globally.

Sovra was founded by Ahmad Wehbi, who watched Lebanon’s banking system fail in 2019, when bank deposits were frozen, and the national currency lost more than 98% of its value. The team brings together backgrounds across McKinsey, Revolut, Jumpcloud, decentralized finance, and the lived experience of disrupted access to finances and savings.

Ahmad Wehbi, Founder and CEO of Sovra, said: “There has always been something between people and their money;  a bank, a border, a fee, a policy, a form. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it took everything. The technology to remove the middleman now exists. Sovra is the simplest way in. Your money works for you and answers only to you. If we disappear tomorrow, it’s still there. That’s not a company policy alone, but the architecture we have built for Sovra.”

Anthony Ghosn, Managing Director, Pharsalus Capital, said: “By giving people sovereign, self-custodial alternatives to fragile fiat and banking systems, Sovra is helping restore financial dignity in Lebanon and beyond. For those of us with ties to the region, these issues are deeply familiar — and Ahmad and the Sovra team stand out for having the courage and clarity to build where others have been constrained by the scale of the problem.”

Sovra operates with a distributed team across the Middle East and Europe. The pre-seed round will fund engineering and product expansion as the company prepares for its public launch and continues building a platform. The waitlist is open at sovra.money

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Zuvees, the Dubai-based premium gifting platform redefining how people celebrate relationships across borders, has announced that it has raised USD 1.6 million from IvyCap Ventures as part of its ongoing Series A round. The latest investment brings the company’s total funding to USD 3.3 million.

The company is targeting a total Series A raise of USD 6–8 million to fuel its next phase of growth, strengthen its technology stack, expand into leading global metropolitan markets, and further its vision of creating the world’s most trusted gifting platform.

Founded by Vijay Ghadge and Abhishek Daiya, Zuvees has rapidly established itself as one of the UAE’s most trusted gifting brands. It offers same-day and 60-minute express delivery of curated flowers, luxury hampers, and personalised gift experiences across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and Ajman.

Launched commercially in the UAE in early 2025, Zuvees has quickly emerged as a fast-growing direct-to-consumer gifting brand, achieving an annualised revenue run-rate exceeding USD 3 million while maintaining strong unit economics. The company serves customers in more than 50 countries, with a significant share of orders originating from international senders who are gifting across borders.

The follow-on investment from IvyCap Ventures, an existing investor in Zuvees, reflects continued confidence in the company’s execution capabilities, technology-led differentiation, and ability to build a globally relevant consumer brand.

The newly raised capital will be deployed to expand Zuvees’ operational footprint, scale its AI-powered personalisation and recommendation engine, strengthen its proprietary supply chain infrastructure, and deepen its customer intelligence and CRM capabilities.

Zuvees is now pioneering what it calls ‘Gifting 3.0 ‘—a new category that combines expert curation, artificial intelligence, and rapid fulfilment to transform gifting into a highly personalised, transparent, and reliable experience.

While e-commerce has transformed nearly every consumer category over the past decade, gifting remains surprisingly broken. Customers often purchase gifts based on images and promises, only to discover that what gets delivered does not match their expectations. This challenge becomes even more pronounced in cross-border gifting, where trust is paramount and the sender rarely gets visibility into the final delivered experience.

At the same time, consumer behaviour is rapidly evolving. Gifting is transitioning from a ‘gift later’ category, where purchases were planned days or weeks in advance, to a ‘gift today’ and increasingly ‘gift now’ category, driven by modern lifestyles, instant communication, and the desire to celebrate moments in real time.

Zuvees has built its platform around solving these challenges through a combination of curated premium products, AI-driven personalisation, operational excellence, and customer-first innovations such as Video Approval before dispatch and a 100% customer satisfaction commitment policy.

Vijay Ghadge, Co-Founder & CEO of Zuvees, said: “When someone sends a gift, they are not purchasing flowers, chocolates, or a hamper. They are purchasing an emotion.

The biggest challenge in gifting today is expectation mismatch. What the sender imagines, what the platform promises, and what the recipient ultimately receives are often three very different things. This trust gap has existed for decades and becomes even more significant in cross-border gifting, where customers are relying entirely on the platform to represent their emotions.

At Zuvees, we have built the company around eliminating that gap. Every innovation we introduce, from Video Approval before dispatch to our quality assurance systems and customer-first guarantees, is designed to ensure that what customers expect is exactly what gets delivered.

We are also witnessing a structural shift in consumer behaviour. Gifting is moving from a planned activity to an on-demand experience. People no longer want to celebrate tomorrow. They want to celebrate now. The future belongs to platforms that can combine trust, personalisation, and speed, and that’s precisely what we’re building.

While we started in the UAE, our ambition has always been global. The UAE is one of the world’s most cosmopolitan markets, bringing together people from over 130 nationalities with strong gifting traditions and high cross-border engagement. It has proven to be an ideal testing ground for building a brand designed for globally connected consumers. The playbooks, technology, and customer insights we are developing here are intended to scale across major international cities around the world.”

Abhishek Daiya, Co-Founder & CPO/CFO of Zuvees, added: “We believe the next generation of gifting companies will be powered by intelligence rather than catalogues.

The challenge isn’t helping customers buy a gift. The challenge is helping them discover the right gift for the right person at the right moment. Relationships are nuanced, occasions are personal, and customer expectations continue to evolve.

We are building a proprietary AI layer that understands gifting intent, recipient preferences, purchase behavior, cultural context, and occasion-specific signals to deliver hyper-personalised recommendations at scale.

This investment allows us to accelerate that vision by expanding our technology capabilities, automating our operations, and building the data infrastructure necessary to power a truly intelligent gifting platform. Our goal is to become the trusted layer between human emotions and meaningful gifting experiences.”

Vikram Gupta, Founder & Managing Partner, IvyCap Ventures, said: “What attracted us to Zuvees is its ability to address a global consumer need through a technology-led platform. As gifting becomes increasingly cross-border, the company is uniquely positioned to deliver trusted, personalised experiences at scale. We have been impressed by the team’s execution and are excited to support their journey in building a category-defining global gifting brand.”

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CNTXT AI, a UAE-based data and AI company that enables companies and institutions to develop AI solutions while maintaining full sovereignty over their data, announced the successful closing of a $60 million Series A funding round.

The round was co-led by two of the region’s most active AI investors: AI71, Abu Dhabi’s applied AI company focused on sovereign, domain‑specialized AI, and BlueFive Capital, a global asset manager originating out of the GCC. The funding will support continued product development, expansion into new markets, and global deployment of secure AI infrastructure for enterprise and public-sector environments.

CNTXT AI was founded by Mohammad Abu Sheikh, a tech entrepreneur with a track record of successful exits and deep experience across AI infrastructure, applied AI platforms, and ecosystem development. Abu Sheikh’s previous venture LocAI was successfully acquired by AI71, who now returns as co-lead investor in this round. He is also the founder of SMPL AI, a $25 million fund supporting early-stage AI startups, reinforcing his role in building a global AI ecosystem focused on real-world impact.

The company works with global technology leaders including Oracle, NVIDIA, and AWS, and has supported several major global AI developers on large language model initiatives, deploying enterprise and government AI projects across multiple markets. Its proprietary products include Munsit, the most accurate Arabic voice AI, which has processed over one million minutes of speech and serves more than 250 enterprises and 150,000 users.

Mohammad Abu Sheikh, Founder and CEO of CNTXT AI: “The era of AI experimentation is over; the era of execution has begun. This funding strengthens our ability to build the sovereign infrastructure and talent needed to deploy AI at scale. Our focus has always been on making AI work in the real world, under the most demanding conditions.”

Reda Nidhakou, member of AI71 board of Directors, and CEO of VentureOne: “CNTXT AI capabilities and speed of execution stand out in this fast moving AI world. An impressive venture born in the UAE but addressing global AI deployment needs. This investment strengthens our ability to build the environment needed to deploy AI at scale and to address our clients data sovereignty requirements.”

Hazem Ben-Gacem, Founder and CEO of BlueFive Capital: “We backed CNTXT AI because they are building exactly the kind of technology-driven platform the region needs, one that turns raw data into real AI outcomes. This is the type of globally competitive business we want to build alongside.”

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