The fund backed five startups in the first quarter, partnering with leading global venture capital and technology firms.
In the first quarter of 2026, the Presight–Shorooq Fund I deployed capital into five AI startups, actively advancing its mission to connect frontier artificial intelligence companies with the UAE’s sovereign infrastructure and the wider MENA capital ecosystem.
Launched in September 2025 through a partnership between Shorooq Partners and Presight, the $100 million global AI innovation fund focuses on high-conviction investments across the AI stack. During its first 120 days, the team evaluated more than 1,000 companies outside its home market and selected five high-potential ventures.
The portfolio now spans sovereign cloud infrastructure, vertical AI solutions for finance and construction, and edge-native voice intelligence. In executing these deals, the fund co-invested alongside leading global firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, GV, Quiet Capital, First Round Capital, and Y Combinator. Prominent angels, including Yann LeCun, Paul Graham, and Peter Thiel, also backed several of the companies.
Commenting on the strategy, Dr. Bilal Baloch, Partner at Shorooq and the fund’s lead, said the initial investments demonstrate a deliberate effort to bridge global AI innovation with regional market access and regulatory alignment.
Magzhan Kenesbai, Chief Growth Officer of Presight, emphasized that AI delivers lasting value only when companies embed it into real-world systems, especially within complex and highly regulated environments.
Portfolio Companies Backed in Q1 2026
NodeShift – Sovereign AI Cloud (Abu Dhabi, UAE)
NodeShift secured a $1 million seed round. The company is building an AI-native sovereign cloud platform designed to replace fragmented legacy infrastructure. Its Rust-based architecture integrates virtualization, cloud management, and AI stacks into a unified system.
Unlike traditional hyperscalers, NodeShift eliminates foreign telemetry and dependencies, enabling strict onshore data processing for high-security clients across the GCC, Central Asia, Europe, and the US. By aggregating underutilized global capacity, it delivers GPU workloads up to 65 percent cheaper than public cloud providers.
Candid – Vertical AI for Engineering & Construction (San Francisco, USA)
Candid raised $6 million in seed funding. The startup deploys AI agents to automate the pre-construction bidding process for engineering and construction firms.
Traditional bidding cycles take up to 12 weeks and cost roughly $1 million per project. Candid reduces preparation time tenfold by ingesting complete project documentation, reconciling inconsistencies, and tightening bid error margins from ±25 percent to ±10 percent. The platform enables firms to pursue more projects while protecting margins.
Hebbia – Vertical AI for Finance (New York, USA)
Hebbia received an undisclosed investment. The company develops enterprise-grade AI systems capable of multi-step reasoning across vast private datasets, including regulatory filings and virtual data rooms.
Its proprietary Iterative Source Decomposition architecture breaks complex queries into logical subtasks and provides citation-backed outputs. This structure ensures traceability and verification for financial institutions, law firms, and government entities operating in trust-sensitive environments.
Blue – Voice and Edge AI (San Francisco, USA)
Blue closed a $5.5 million pre-seed round. The company is developing an “Action Model” for mobile that executes multi-step tasks across applications without relying on traditional API integrations.
Its patent-pending USB-C hardware device, “The Bud,” grants the application direct interface control, enabling on-device large language model inference. This approach enhances privacy and eliminates cloud dependency for sensitive tasks such as payments and file management.
Crunched – Vertical AI for Finance (San Francisco, USA)
Crunched secured $6 million in seed funding. The platform functions as an AI-powered Excel analyst tailored for consultants and investment professionals.
Embedded directly within spreadsheets, Crunched audits financial models, extracts structured data from PDFs, and builds analyses autonomously. Early enterprise adoption reports productivity improvements exceeding two times traditional workflows.
Bridging AI Infrastructure and Implementation
Taken together, the first cohort shows a deliberate allocation across infrastructure, applications, and vertical intelligence layers. From sovereign cloud platforms to AI-driven financial modeling agents, the fund has aligned each investment with its core thesis: AI-native companies must build defensible advantages through proprietary data, infrastructure ownership, or embedded distribution channels.
Beyond providing capital, the Presight–Shorooq Fund I actively positions itself as an integration partner. It connects frontier AI startups with regional infrastructure, enterprise platforms, and regulatory frameworks to accelerate real-world deployment across sovereign and corporate environments.
These first five investments demonstrate clear execution momentum. At the same time, the fund’s larger objective remains unchanged: build a durable bridge between leading global AI innovation hubs and the UAE’s fast-growing digital economy.
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