Sirdab closes a $10 million round to automate warehouse matching and close the Gulf logistics capacity gap

Saudi logistics platform Sirdab closed a Series A financing round of $10 million (equivalent to SAR 37.5 million) in a deal led by Al-Elm, a company of the Public Investment Fund, in partnership with Beko Capital, with participation from the Way Combinator incubator and the funds Koto Ventures and The Global Ventures. The company will allocate most of the new capital to develop artificial-intelligence tools that automatically match storage capacities and available transport networks with enterprise requests, aiming to replace traditional intermediation mechanisms that have historically relied on phone calls and manual spreadsheets.

Demand for storage space in Gulf markets has exceeded supply by between 30 % and 50 %.This is the operational bottleneck that the platform seeks to address through an asset-light business model. The company relies on an operational mix that combines facilities it manages itself with those operated by partners across a network of more than 120 warehouses and over 60 logistics-transport providers, covering dry, climate-controlled, refrigerated and frozen storage requirements through a single window.

The operational figures accompanying the round reveal that Sirdab’s revenue has grown twenty-fold since it graduated from the Way Combinator incubator in winter 2023, achieving operational profitability. The platform now serves more than 850 entities, including government bodies, listed joint-stock companies and institutions across multiple sectors. This client mix reflects the platform’s ability to overcome procurement and reliance hurdles that typically confront emerging software in the public sector, while its automated matching algorithms face the challenge of coordinating pricing, quality and capacity levels for facilities the company does not own directly.

Al-Elm’s participation as a lead partner gives the platform a direct distribution advantage within the kingdom’s governmental and semi-governmental ecosystem.Its corporate-relationship network represents a value comparable to the amount of invested liquidity for a platform that seeks to standardize storage and transport contract terms. This round is part of a broader initiative aimed at investing in the operational infrastructure layer of Gulf supply chains, keeping pace with accelerating spending on digital infrastructure and data centres.

This shift moves supply-chain and logistics managers in the Gulf into a new operational reality, where the efficiency of using temporary spaces and returning trucks is governed by instant algorithmic pricing and allocation systems instead of lengthy manual negotiations for each site. However, the platform’s expansion into other Gulf Cooperation Council countries imposes engineering and regulatory requirements that go beyond merely contracting with new warehouses, as each market must adapt to licensing rules, local customs procedures and retrain routing and pricing algorithms on transport patterns specific to each country to ensure operational matching accuracy.