erad raises $22M Series A to widen SME financing across the GCC
The Saudi platform's new round, led by Middle East Venture Partners, brings total equity funding to $32 million.
Tariq Benali Tariq Benali covers business and corporate news across the UAE and MENA for Anecdoted, tracking the deals, leadership moves and regulatory shifts behind the region's companies. tariq@anecdoted.com
erad has raised $22 million (SAR 78.75 million) in Series A funding, a round that brings the Saudi financing platform's total equity raised to $32 million. That figure covers equity only; the company's debt facilities sit outside it.
Middle East Venture Partners led the round. New backers include Araya Ventures, Conjunction Capital, ANB Capital, S60 Ventures, 500 Global and SVC. Aljazira Capital, Nuwa Capital, Khwarizmi Ventures, Joa Capital and Oraseya Capital returned, having taken part in earlier rounds.
The Series A follows a $16 million (SAR 60 million) pre-Series A closed in April 2025, which drew Y Combinator, Nuwa Capital, Khwarizmi Ventures, Aljazira Capital, VentureSouq, Oraseya Capital and Joa Capital.
Between the two equity rounds, erad added debt to its balance sheet: $33 million in financing led by Stride Ventures, and a $125 million debt facility from Jefferies.
Where the new capital goes
erad plans to build new financing products for industrial, logistics and manufacturing borrowers, and to push its footprint further across the Gulf. The company is also hiring, mainly in technology and commercial roles.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE remain the two markets it serves. Industrial, logistics and manufacturing borrowers are the target for the new products, sectors where demand is running ahead of what the current line-up of working capital offerings can serve.
What erad does
Salem Abu-Hammour, Faris Yaghmour, Abdulmalik Almeheini and Youssef Said founded erad in 2022. It provides Shariah-compliant working capital to small and medium enterprises, with tickets of up to $2.7 million (SAR 10 million). In-house AI models process the volume and the larger ticket sizes while managing credit risk.
More than 500 Saudi businesses use the platform. erad reports eightfold year-over-year growth in its operations, has fielded more than $1 billion (SAR 4 billion) in financing requests from SMEs, and has deployed more than $133 million (SAR 500 million) cumulatively.
The pool it is drawing on
Credit extended to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in the kingdom reached $124.5 billion (SAR 467 billion) cumulatively by the end of 2025, up 33% year on year, according to Saudi Arabia's SME Bank.
Requests to erad alone have passed $1 billion, against roughly $133 million actually deployed. The new products and the regional hiring are aimed at that gap.
