Saudi corporate travel firm FlyAkeed secures $25.15 million to scale platform
Growth financing pairs a Sanabil-led equity round with a sukuk to extend payment terms for corporate travel in Saudi Arabia.
FlyAkeed, a Saudi corporate travel technology platform, has secured SAR 94.3 million ($25.15 million) in growth funding. The financing was announced at the LEAP 2026 event in Riyadh. The deal is a mixture of an equity investment and a Murabaha sukuk, so it brings in new shareholders and adds a separate financing facility at the same time.
Sanabil Investments led the equity investment. Sanabil is wholly owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. Artal Capital, tali ventures, and Aljazira Capital participated in the equity portion. tali ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of stc Group. Artal Capital led the sukuk side of the transaction.
FlyAkeed was founded in 2015 by Bassam Almohammadi, who serves as chief executive. The company is headquartered in Riyadh. Its platform covers flights, hotels, ground transportation, approvals, travel policy rules, and spending in one system, so clients do not have to move between booking, expense, and approval tools.
Almohammadi thinks much of the region's business travel process is still informal. “Corporate travel in the region runs on phone calls, WhatsApp groups, and spreadsheets, and FlyAkeed is replacing that with an operating system,” he said. That framing distinguishes the product from a standard travel booking site.
Corporate travel in the region runs on phone calls, WhatsApp groups, and spreadsheets, and FlyAkeed is replacing that with an operating system,
More than 150 corporate clients across Saudi Arabia use the system. PIF, mining company Maaden, Golf Saudi, and the National Housing Company are all customers. The PIF connection goes both ways: the sovereign fund is represented through Sanabil's ownership, and its own employees are among the users.
The capital will primarily be used to launch and expand an embedded deferred-payment service for large enterprises. Instead of settling travel invoices immediately, corporate customers can pay on more flexible terms. Almohammadi says payment flexibility matters to finance teams as much as booking software does. “Large enterprises want better payment terms, not just better software, and FlyAkeed now gives them both,” he said.
Saudi Arabia is the runway. Business travel expenditure in the country was more than $10 billion in 2024, according to FlyAkeed, and is projected to roughly double by 2033.
The investor list has a distinctly state-related shape. Sanabil sits inside the PIF, and FlyAkeed sells to the PIF. tali ventures answers to stc Group. If a vendor's funding lines up with its customer base, growth tracks the spending of the public business sector rather than private enterprise alone.
Deferred settlement changes the revenue structure as well. The company is effectively extending credit in the space between a booking and its final invoice. That income stream is not tied to individual trips, and it could compound if the national business travel market reaches the size the company expects by 2033.
