Erad raises $22 million as credit algorithms reshape corporate financing in the Gulf

Erad, a Riyadh-based platform that specializes in alternative financing for companies’ working capital, closed a Series A round of $22 million (equivalent to SAR 78.75 million) led by MEVP, with new investors including the Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC), 500 Global, S60 Ventures, Al Arabi National Capital, Conjunction Capital and Araya Ventures, alongside existing backers such as Khwarizmi Ventures, Nawa Capital, Al Jazeera Capital, Eurasia Capital and Jaw Capital.

The platform was founded in 2022 by Salem Abu Hamour, Faris Yaghmour, Abdul-Malik Al-Muhaini and Youssef Saeed to offer Sharia-compliant working-capital financing of up to SAR 10 million for small and medium-sized enterprises in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It relies on data analysis and proprietary artificial-intelligence models to assess companies, cash flows and risk, allowing financing approvals in an average of 48 hours.

The round crowns an annual growth of eightfold in the Saudi market, where the platform has provided cumulative financing exceeding SAR 500 million (about $133 million) while receiving financing requests worth more than SAR 4 billion (approximately $1 billion).These indicators reveal the size of the uncovered financing gap, as about 85 percent of clients continue to expand their facilities with the platform during their first year.

Erad plans to use the funding to develop new financing products, expand geographically across the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and grow its technical and commercial teams through qualitative hiring, focusing on vital sectors such as industry, logistics services, wholesale distribution and medical equipment. The company had previously boosted its lending liquidity in November 2025 through scalable financing facilities worth $125 million led by Jefferies bank.

Small and medium-sized enterprises represent roughly half of GCC GDP and employ two-thirds of the workforce, yet they face a financing gap estimated at around $250 billion.Here we see a practical shift in the credit subscription mechanism, where replacing traditional manual screening with algorithmic underwriting models accelerates the capital cycle and provides financing for transport fleets, inventory and contract expansion without freezing operating cash.

For anyone leading a technical team or managing finance in a company in the Gulf, Egypt or the Levant, this development has direct implications on two levels. On the skills and hiring side, the platform’s expansion and recruitment of technical talent confirms a regional rise in demand for AI engineers specialized in financial modeling and real-time risk management. On the business-environment side, moving credit assessment to a timeline that does not exceed two days gives operations and logistics managers decisive flexibility to capture contracts and tenders, while simultaneously putting competitive pressure on traditional financing channels to accelerate digitisation of their procedures and overcome banking bureaucracy.