Saudi Aramco-backed Wa’ed Ventures has led the latest $6.5 million pre-series A fundraising round for aiXplain, a California-based AI platform.

Several strategic angel investors also participated in the round, raising the total funding to $16.5 million since aiXplain’s inception in 2020.  

The startup plans to utilise the new funds to expedite the rollout of its agentic tooling solutions and simplify the process of building AI agents for local businesses with limited technical resources.

“aiXplain has already helped close the AI innovation gap in the MENA region,” said Fahad Alidi, Managing Director and CEO at Wa’ed Ventures. 

“We see significant potential for the company to localise its solutions in the Kingdom,” he added.

aiXplain’s subsidiary in Saudi Arabia will function as the company’s MENA region’s headquarters to drive growth in the Kingdom.

The $500 million Wa’ed Ventures will support the localisation of the company’s AI solutions in the Kingdom, as part of its plans to position the country as the next global AI hub. 

The National Data and Artificial Intelligence Strategy (NSDAI) was established in 2020 in the Kingdom to attract investments in data and AI, which is expected to reach $19 billion by 2030.

aiXplain has actively been working with over a dozen regional AI organisations to build an alliance for Arabic large language model development, which is set to debut later this year. 

(Editing by Seban Scaria seban.scaria@lseg.com )