Saudi fintech erad raises $22 million Series A led by MEVP
Riyadh-based erad will use the Series A to add financing products, widen its GCC coverage and hire across technology and commercial teams.
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erad, a Riyadh-headquartered fintech that funds small and medium-sized businesses, has raised $22 million in a Series A round led by MEVP. The raise totals SAR 78.75 million.
New investors in the round include 500 Global, Saudi Venture Capital, S60 Ventures, ANB Capital, Conjunction Capital and Araya Ventures. Khwarizmi Ventures, Nuwa Capital, Aljazira Capital, Oraseya Capital and Joa Capital, all of which had already backed the company, also took part.
Founded in 2022 by Salem Abu-Hammour, Faris Yaghmour, Abdulmalik Almeheini and Youssef Said, erad offers Shariah-compliant working capital of up to SAR 10 million to SMEs in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The company assesses borrowers with data and AI models and clears most requests within an average of 48 hours. Terms are flexible and set at the point of need, and the platform carries several working-capital products across different sectors.
erad has deployed more than SAR 500 million, about $133 million, in cumulative financing. SMEs have submitted requests topping SAR 4 billion, roughly $1 billion, since the company started. It treats that pile of applications as evidence of how much demand for working capital remains unmet across the region. Annual growth in Saudi Arabia reached 8x.
The new capital goes toward additional financing products, deeper coverage across the GCC and hiring in technology and commercial teams. erad is targeting capital-intensive industries, naming industrial, logistics and manufacturing as priorities, and it now writes financing for logistics, medical equipment and wholesale distribution businesses that sit outside its original target sectors.
Underwriting runs on proprietary models that track client cash flows and limit risk exposure, which the company says lets it handle higher volumes and larger ticket sizes. Clients that borrow tend to borrow more: about 85% expand their financing with erad within the first year.
The money reaches borrowers in visible ways. Financing has paid for fleet expansion, inventory, new locations and larger contracts without consuming the cash those businesses need for day-to-day operations.
Abu-Hammour said SMEs generate roughly half of regional GDP and employ two-thirds of the GCC workforce, yet still run into a financing gap that holds back their growth. He described the round as the start of a push into new sectors and products that did not exist before, adding that clients come to erad for speed and that its model has proved itself.
MEVP partner Jad El Boustani put the GCC's SME financing gap at $250 billion and said erad is built to address it through disciplined underwriting rather than volume alone. He pointed to the founding team's domain expertise and execution as the main source of the firm's conviction, and said the investment reflects MEVP's continued commitment to Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf technology market.
In November 2025, erad secured a $125 million scalable facility led by Jefferies.
