Arab Therapy raises $2M pre-Series A to expand in Saudi Arabia

Arab Therapy has raised $2 million in a pre-Series A round. Manara Ventures led the financing. Anara Impact Fund and Value Makers Studio (VMS) also participated, giving the round venture capital, impact investment, and studio backing in a single deal.

The company was founded in 2021 by Dr Tareq Dalbah and Hekmat Al Hasi, both Jordanian entrepreneurs. Arab Therapy is based in Berlin, but it originated in Jordan. That background is not decoration. The product is built for Arabic-speaking users, with language and cultural context treated as part of clinical quality.

Arab Therapy is a digital mental health startup operating an AI-powered mental health platform. Users can join online therapy sessions with licensed specialists, work through mental health content, and use AI-powered tools alongside that care. The clinical framework is supervised by professionals from the University of Hamburg, so the AI is held to a professional standard rather than running on its own.

Clinicians are central to the model. The AI-powered tools do not replace them; they handle parts of the experience such as content delivery and support, while licensed specialists provide the therapy itself. The oversight from the University of Hamburg gives that structure a clinical anchor.

The company runs two parallel models. On the B2C side, it sells directly to Arabic-speaking individuals. On the B2B side, it sells to corporate customers who want mental health support for their employees. The two tracks support each other: individual use builds the brand, while employer contracts create recurring revenue.

Corporate clients bring a different scale of use. One contract can cover many employees, which gives the platform a steadier base than individual subscriptions alone. That explains why Arab Therapy presents itself as a B2B service as much as a B2C one.

The new capital is meant to push the company deeper into the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is the first target, and the wider region will follow. The market is large. More than 400 million people speak Arabic globally, and culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health services remain scarce. A platform built in Arabic from the start has a different relationship to that market than a global app with an Arabic translation layer.

This is not Arab Therapy's first raise. In April 2024, the company closed a $1 million seed round led by Flat6Labs and Vision Health Pioneers. The new pre-Series A is twice that amount and adds investors who were not in the seed round. The trajectory points to a company preparing for a defined geographic expansion rather than experimental growth.

The investor lineup carries a signal. Anara Impact Fund is an impact investor; Value Makers Studio is a studio investor. Both are joining Manara Ventures, which led the round. That combination suggests Arabic-language mental health is starting to look like a real business category, not a public health side project. The proof will come with the Saudi expansion, where Arab Therapy will have to show that its B2C and B2B models can work at scale.