Week 23's Biggest Startup Funding Rounds in Africa and the Middle East, Led by DriveNets and Cyera

Startups across Africa and the Middle East raised a combined $1.19 billion this week, based on disclosed funding rounds tracked by Techloy, making it one of the heaviest single weeks the region has seen all year. Israel drove most of the total through five rounds spanning AI networking, cybersecurity, and identity security. The UAE added two large deals in autonomous logistics and electric mobility, and South Africa closed out the week with an early-stage logistics raise.

The Week's Largest Startup Funding Rounds

Here are the biggest disclosed startup funding rounds across Africa and the Middle East this week.

DriveNets started out building networking software for telecoms giants and shifted into AI infrastructure over the past eighteen months, now helping companies build the network fabric inside large-scale AI server farms. Founded in 2015 by Ido Susan and Hillel Kobrinsky in Ra'anana, the company has signed over $1 billion in business, turned cash-flow positive in 2025, and counts AT&T among its biggest customers.

Bessemer Venture Partners and Atreides Management led the Series D, with chip giant AMD joining as a strategic investor alongside new backer Red Dot Capital and existing investors Pitango and D1 Capital Partners. The round values DriveNets at $8.5 billion and brings total funding to $1 billion. The money goes toward scaling inventory and expanding AI infrastructure capacity to meet demand expected through 2026 and 2027.

Cyera builds a platform that helps large organisations find and protect sensitive data across cloud environments and has raised three times in five months, going from a $9 billion valuation in January to $12 billion this week. Founded in 2021 by Yotam Segev and Tamar Bar-Ilan, both Unit 8200 and Talpiot veterans, the company is already deployed by 20 percent of Fortune 500 companies and recently acquired two Israeli startups, Genie Security and Ryft, as it broadens the platform.

Evolution Equity Partners led this round, with Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Accel, Coatue, Greenoaks, Cyberstarts, Georgian, Sapphire Ventures, Redpoint, and Spark Capital all participating. Total funding now exceeds $1.6 billion. The money goes toward expanding the platform and integrating recent acquisitions.

CargoX came out of stealth this week as the region's largest single bet on driverless delivery, having piloted its vehicles across last-mile, middle-mile, and long-haul routes on public roads in the UAE and lining up anchor customers across e-commerce, retail, and logistics ahead of commercial launch in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The UAE-based company brought in Tomaso Rodriguez, the former CEO who grew Talabat ninefold and led its $2 billion IPO in 2024, to run operations.

BlueFive Capital led the round alongside a group of investors. The money goes toward building out the autonomous logistics network across the UAE, continued investment in vehicle technology, operations infrastructure, and international expansion.

Spiro, the Dubai-headquartered company that operates Africa's largest electric motorcycle and battery-swapping network, raised $215 million this week to fund its next phase of continental expansion. The company has over 100,000 electric bikes on roads across seven African markets, more than 2,500 battery-swapping stations, and over 30 million battery swaps completed to date. Founder Gagan Gupta said the company is approaching a unicorn valuation.

Impact Fund Denmark and Equitane backed the equity round, alongside FEDA and a group of European and African institutional investors. The money goes toward strengthening local manufacturing, expanding the swapping network, and entering Malawi, Mali, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Willow, based in Herzliya, came out of stealth this week after building and testing its platform inside Wix first, deploying it across more than 5,000 employees before bringing it to market. The company, founded by former Wix engineers Eyal Ben Ezra, Shalev Shalit, and Idan Chetrit, gives enterprises a way to connect AI agents to internal systems with controls over what each agent can access, full audit trails, and organisation-wide governance.

Hetz Ventures led the seed round after Wix co-founder and CEO Avishai Abrahami and Wix President Nir Zohar backed the company at the angel stage. The money goes toward go-to-market expansion and accelerating product development.

Offroad came out of stealth this week with a platform that uses AI agents to track, investigate, and fix identity risks across human employees, machine accounts, and AI agents inside enterprise systems, without waiting for a security team to manually catch an issue. Dan Bendler and Philip Shteyn, a former Unit 8200 officer, founded the Tel Aviv and New York company in May 2025.

Ibex Investors and Skywell Capital led the seed round. The money goes toward growing the team and scaling the platform among enterprise customers.

Avi Maja and Braden Snyman started Breaze Delivery in Johannesburg in 2021 to give online merchants same-day and on-demand delivery through a flexible driver network, with live tracking and direct integrations into Shopify and WooCommerce. The Vumela Enterprise Development Fund, a partnership between FNB Business Banking and Edge Growth, backed the round.

The money goes toward scaling the technology platform, extending the driver network, and expanding geographically to meet growing demand from retailers and brands across South Africa.

Other funding this week includes DAWAR, an Egyptian platform that digitally tracks recyclable materials across 22 Egyptian governorates, which secured a nine-figure financing facility. Efham.ai, an Arabic-language AI education platform built by Egypt-based NixAI, received an investment from Foras.AI in an undisclosed amount.

With $1.19 billion in disclosed funding this week, Israel and the UAE each drove significant portions of the total, with AI infrastructure, autonomous logistics, and cybersecurity pulling the largest individual checks. Willow and Offroad both came out of stealth in the same week, making it an unusually active moment for Israeli cybersecurity specifically.