MENA startup funding hits $1.1 billion in September on three Saudi fintech deals
Funding rose 193% from August but stayed 68% below September 2025, with three deals capturing nearly 70% of the total.
Anecdoted Desk Anecdoted Desk covers rolling funding rounds and startup news across the UAE and MENA -- the wire for deals as they're announced. team@anecdoted.com
Startups across the Middle East and North Africa raised $1.1 billion through 73 deals in September, the first month above the billion-dollar mark in some time and a 193% increase on August. The comparison with a year earlier is less flattering: funding sat 68% below September 2025.
Three transactions did most of the work. Barq's $329.5 million Series A, Tabby's $233 million Series F and Lendo's $200 million debt financing came to $762.5 million, close to 70% of everything raised during the month. Capital came back, in other words, but it landed on a small group of large, predominantly Saudi fintechs rather than spreading evenly across the ecosystem.
Debt accounted for 31.7% of the September total, well below the 76% recorded a year earlier, which means equity carried far more of this year's headline figure.
Saudi Arabia reclaims the top spot
Saudi Arabia returned to first place with $947.2 million raised by 40 startups, roughly 86% of all MENA capital for the month. Fintech supplied 86% of the kingdom's total, lifted by Barq, Tabby and Lendo.
The UAE, which led in August, slipped to second with $98.4 million from 12 deals. Five of those companies were fintechs, and together they produced 71% of the country's funding — a sign the sector's weight is not a Saudi phenomenon alone.
Egypt came back into the top three after a month in which it recorded no funding at all. Seven startups raised $49.2 million, though Paymob's $35 million pre-Series C round accounted for about 71% of it. Qatar followed with four deals worth $2.4 million, then Kuwait, where COFE recorded an estimated $1 million transaction. Two deals in Syria and Palestine brought in $580,000 combined, and Bahrain logged five transactions worth $275,000.
Fintech back on top
Twenty fintech startups raised $930.6 million, about 85% of all capital deployed in the region. Barq, Tabby and Lendo again dominated, making up roughly 82% of fintech funding. September was as much a story about deal size as sector strength.
Proptech was a distant second at $50.2 million across three deals, almost all of it Rize's $50 million round. Traveltech took third with $25.2 million from two deals.
Later-stage rounds return
Five later-stage startups raised $288 million, a comeback for larger equity rounds after a stretch in which investors favoured smaller and earlier bets. Early-stage companies still led on both deal count and capital, with $418.2 million across 39 transactions. Twenty-three startups did not disclose a stage and six transactions were classified as debt.
B2B remained the busiest segment of the market: $457.7 million across 47 deals. Consumer companies took $406.4 million from 16 deals, and the remaining capital went to startups operating across both models.
One imbalance barely moved. Male-led startups drew around $1 billion. Female-founded companies raised $2.4 million, and mixed-gender founding teams another $7.3 million.
Third-quarter investment pushed past $1.7 billion. Strip out the three mega-deals, though, and September looks far more ordinary — one country absorbed roughly 86% of the region's funding, one sector about 85%. Whether that momentum spreads to more countries, sectors and funding stages is the question the fourth quarter will answer.
