{"id":60182,"date":"2026-02-24T08:14:51","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T05:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entarabi.com\/?p=60182"},"modified":"2026-02-24T08:35:52","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T05:35:52","slug":"presight-shorooq-100m-ai-fund-deploys-capital-in-five-companies-in-its-first-quarter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entarabi.com\/en\/2026\/02\/presight-shorooq-100m-ai-fund-deploys-capital-in-five-companies-in-its-first-quarter\/","title":{"rendered":"Presight\u2013Shorooq $100M AI Fund Deploys Capital in Five Companies in its First Quarter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Presight\u2013Shorooq Fund Announces $100 Million Investment in Five Companies Within Its First Three Months<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The fund has partnered with several of the world\u2019s leading names in venture capital and technology, with its portfolio companies backed by prominent investment institutions such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Index Ventures, Google Ventures (GV), Quiet Capital, First Round Capital, and Y Combinator.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\"> Since it launched in September 2025, The Presight-Shorooq Fund I, a $100 million global AI innovation fund, has invested in five cutting-edge AI startups led by experienced alumni from DeepMind, Google X, Meta, and Stanford across the U.S. and UAE markets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">These companies are Nodeshift, Candid, Hebbia, Blue and Crunched.<br><br>Launched as a strategic partnership between Shorooq and Presight (a G42 Company), the fund is fulfilling its high-conviction mandate to bridge the world\u2019s most promising AI companies with the UAE\u2019s premier sovereign infrastructure and the broader MENA capital ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\"> The initial cohort represents a strategic cross-section of &#8220;frontier intelligence&#8221;, spanning from agentic reasoning and physical AI to sovereign cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Across these investments, the fund has partnered alongside some of the most respected names in global venture capital and technology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Portfolio companies are backed by firms such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Index Ventures, Google Ventures (GV), Quiet Capital, First Round Capital, and Y Combinator, alongside iconic angel investors including Yann LeCun, Paul Graham, and Peter Thiel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The fund\u2019s strategy is deliberate: back world-class founders building AI-native products with defensible data advantages, distribution leverage, or infrastructure control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Dr. Bilal Baloch, Partner at Shorooq, who is leading the fund, commented: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cWhen we launched this fund, our vision was to connect world-class AI innovators with the capital, regulatory support, and market access that our region offers&#8221;.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">He add:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\">&#8221; To have invested in five highly promising companies, after assessing over 1000, outside our home market alongside leading peers in the US and Asia in 120 days is a marker toward that vision,  We were most impressed that these founders are pushing the boundaries of what AI can do \u2013 from giving every app a voice interface to automating billion-dollar industries \u2013 and thereby allowing us to back varying theses across the AI stack&#8221;.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">He said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\">&#8221; This is just the beginning; we believe the fund can be a bridge between East and West for AI, and we\u2019re committed to accelerating more breakthroughs that will transform businesses and communities.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Magzhan Kenesbai, Chief Growth Officer of Presight, commented: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cAI only creates lasting value when it can operate within real systems. These first investments reflect that conviction \u2013 spanning secure AI infrastructure, vertical intelligence platforms for capital and industry, and edge-native systems&#8221;.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">He add:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\">: Each of these companies is building technology designed for integration into complex, regulated environments, Through this fund we are creating clear pathways from innovation to implementation \u2013 translating frontier AI into intelligent systems at scale.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Portfolio Investments: Five Global AI Innovators Backed to Date<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-left\"><br>NodeShit<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\"> is building the first AI-native sovereign cloud platform designed to replace fragmented legacy infrastructure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Unlike mainstream cloud providers that struggle with data sovereignty and high costs, NodeShift consolidates virtualization, cloud management, and the AI stack into a single, unified Rust-based platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\"> This &#8220;true air-gap&#8221; system is specifically built for high-security clients in the GCC, central Asia, Europe and the US, removing foreign telemetry and dependencies to fulfill strict legal mandates for onshore data processing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">By aggregating underutilized global capacity, NodeShift offers GPU workloads that are up to 65% cheaper than public clouds and significantly more efficient than legacy virtualization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The company was founded by Andrey Surkov and Mihai M\u0103rcu\u021b\u0103, a team of ex-Cisco, Microsoft, and Tesla engineers who bring deep domain expertise in networking and cloud architecture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-left\"><br>Candid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\"> (Vertical AI for Engineering &amp; Construction) \u2014 $6mm Seed round \u2014 San Francisco, USA Candid\u2019s AI agent collapses the notoriously inefficient pre-construction bidding phase for EPCs (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\"> While traditional manual bidding costs $1 million and takes 12 weeks per project, Candid reduces this preparation time by 10x, enabling firms to submit high-fidelity bids in just 1\u20132 weeks. By systematically ingesting 100% of project materials (PDFs, drawings, and specs), Candid eliminates the industry&#8217;s reliance on manual reviews that typically only cover 10% of documentation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This automation reconciles inconsistencies and flags critical errors, tightening bid error margins from \u00b125% to a manageable \u00b110%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This precision prevents the wipeout of project margins and unlocks 2x revenue potential by allowing engineering teams to chase a higher volume of profitable bids. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Talha Faiz and Hassan Azmat, both mechanical engineers turned entrepreneurs, co-founded Candid after working on some of Asia\u2019s largest energy projects and pursuing AI research at Carnegie Mellon University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-left\">Hebbia <\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\" dir=\"ltr\">(Vertical AI for Finance) \u2014 Undisclosed investment \u2014 New York, USA<br>Hebbia is an enterprise-grade AI platform built to handle the world\u2019s most complex knowledge work in finance, law, and government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\" dir=\"ltr\">Unlike standard chatbots that struggle with multi-step reasoning, Hebbia\u2019s flagship interface, Matrix, acts as a collaborative AI agent that can ingest millions of pages of private data (regulatory filings, PDFs, VDRs) to perform end-to-end analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\" dir=\"ltr\"> The platform\u2019s critical differentiator is its proprietary Iterative Source Decomposition (ISD) architecture, which breaks down complex queries into logical sub-tasks and provides citation-backed verification for every answer\u2014ensuring &#8220;ground truth&#8221; for firms where trust is paramount. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\" dir=\"ltr\">Founded by George Sivulka at Stanford in 2020, Hebbia is \u201cbuilding the human layer \u2013 the product layer \u2013 to AI.\u201d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-left\">Blue<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong> (Voice AI \/ Edge AI) <\/strong>\u2014<strong> $5.5mm Pre-Seed round <\/strong>\u2014 <strong>San Francisco, USA<br><\/strong>Blue is developing the first functional &#8220;Action Model&#8221; for mobile, designed to bypass the traditional limitations of app APIs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\"> Unlike current reactive voice assistants (Siri, Google Assistant) that rely on developer-built integrations, Blue\u2019s technology executes multi-step commands by directly simulating mouse and keyboard control over the user interface. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This allows Blue to perform complex, hands-free tasks\u2014such as reading and replying to messages, making payments, and managing files\u2014inside any application. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The platform&#8217;s critical moat is &#8220;The Bud,&#8221; a patent-pending USB-C hardware dongle that plugs into the phone to grant the Blue app direct control over the UI via Bluetooth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This hardware-software synergy allows for real-time, on-device LLM inference, ensuring that sensitive user data remains private and secure without relying on cloud processing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The company was co-founded by Omar Abdelaziz, Peter Krogh, and Farhan Hossain, who bring experience from Google Assistant, Google DeepMind, and Apple\u2019s Vision Pro team.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-left\">Crunched <\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">(Vertical AI for Finance) \u2014 $6mm Seed round \u2014 San Francisco, USA<br>Crunched is an AI-powered Excel analyst designed for power users in consulting and investment finance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Crunched acts as an AI assistant inside spreadsheets \u2013 it can audit complex financial models for errors, pull data from the web or PDFs into templates, and even build analyses from scratch, cutting hours-long tasks down to minutes. In early use with consulting and private equity firms, users report productivity boosts over 2\u00d7 in Excel work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cCrunched is the first AI Excel agent built by and for Excel power users,\u201d tailored to management consulting and finance workflows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The company\u2019s co-founders include Michael Sakowski, Lars G. Mus\u00e6us, Markus Skagemo, and Philip Z. Borge, who collectively bring experience from McKinsey, banking, and enterprise AI development.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-left\">About the Presight\u2013Shorooq Fund I<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The Presight\u2013Shorooq Fund I is a $100 million venture fund launched in partnership between Presight (G42\u2019s AI and data analytics arm) and Shorooq in Abu Dhabi. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The fund focuses on early-stage \u201cAI-first\u201d startups globally, investing in sectors such as fintech, smart cities, energy, industry 4.0, and deep tech. Portfolio companies benefit not only from capital but also from access to Presight\u2019s AI infrastructure and G42\u2019s ecosystem, as well as Shorooq\u2019s track record in scaling startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\"> The fund exemplifies the UAE\u2019s growing role as a hub for AI innovation and a conduit for connecting regional resources with global entrepreneurial talent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">By backing visionary founders and co-investing with international partners, Presight\u2013Shorooq Fund I aims to drive responsible AI growth on a global scale, from Abu Dhabi to the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-left\">About Shorooq<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Founded in 2017, Shorooq is a multi-strategy investment firm engineered around technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\"> Our strategies span venture capital, credit, private equity, and real assets\u2014each guided by a tech native lens that informs how we identify innovation, underwrite risk, and drive value. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This integrated approach allows us to invest across the capital stack in businesses reshaping their sectors, from fintech and software to AI, industrials, and infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Rooted in a founder-centric principle and disciplined underwriting, Shorooq blends global investment standards with true on-the-ground presence across the MENA and Asia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p dir=\"ltr\">We are building an institution designed to endure, born in a region where the future of capital is being written.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since it launched in September 2025, The Presight-Shorooq Fund I, a $100 million global AI innovation fund, has invested in five cutting-edge AI startups led by experienced alumni from DeepMind, Google X, Meta, and Stanford across the U.S. and UAE markets. These companies are Nodeshift, Candid, Hebbia, Blue and Crunched. Launched as a strategic partnership [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":60180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"post_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8850],"tags":[11521,11520,11522,11519,11518,8356],"class_list":["post-60182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-venture","tag-blue","tag-candid","tag-crunched","tag-nodeshift","tag-presight-shorooq-fund-i","tag-y-combinator-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entarabi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entarabi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entarabi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entarabi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entarabi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/entarabi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60183,"href":"https:\/\/entarabi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60182\/revisions\/60183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entarabi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entarabi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entarabi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entarabi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}