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91探花 is excited to announce the winners of our very first MENA40 campaign 2026, celebrating the most exciting companies in the MENA region.

Founded in 2016, 91探花 is the UK鈥檚 best-known and fastest-growing startup and tech news site. This听is where decision-makers, investors and startups of all sizes and nature come to find out the latest developments and trends within the industry.

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See The List

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Top 40 鈥� See Here >>

Top 30 鈥� See Here >>

Top 20 鈥� See Here >>

Top 10 鈥撎�See Here >>

Who Ranked Number 1? 鈥撎�See Here听>>

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Feedback From The Judges

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鈥淚n evaluating the submissions, I looked beyond factors such as valuation, funding, and company size to assess the qualities reflecting long-term potential and sustainable success. My assessment focused on the significance of the challenge each company is addressing, the originality of its solution, the strength of its execution, measurable customer impact, scalability, commercial viability, and the clarity of its leadership vision.

鈥淚 was particularly impressed by companies that demonstrated a strong sense of purpose supported by tangible results, rather than relying solely on ambitious aspirations. The highest-ranked companies distinguished themselves through consistent execution, meaningful innovation, and their ability to create lasting value for both customers and their industries. Beyond their growth potential, they showed the resilience, strategic direction, and market relevance needed to make a meaningful, lasting contribution to the future of the MENA business ecosystem.鈥�

, Co-Founder, Product Strategy and Innovation at Taxmingo

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鈥淛udging this competition was genuinely inspiring because it highlighted how far the MENA startup ecosystem has evolved. I was impressed by both the later-stage companies, such as Paymob, MNT-Halan, and Grubtech, which have demonstrated exceptional execution at scale, and the earlier-stage founders building bold solutions with strong long-term potential. The best submissions weren鈥檛 just built around exciting technology; they showed a deep understanding of real customer problems and clear evidence that their products create meaningful value.

鈥淲ith continued investment, supportive ecosystems, and ambitious founders tackling important challenges, I believe the next five years will be transformational for MENA. The region is well positioned to become one of the world鈥檚 leading innovation hubs, producing globally competitive companies that shape the future of technology far beyond the region.鈥�

, Co-Founder and CEO of

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鈥淭he top companies in this ranking represent the vanguard of MENA鈥檚 tech maturity, combining massive scale with true innovation. Led by pioneering fintech unicorns like Tamara and MNT Halan, these businesses are building foundational financial and digital rails for millions of users across the region.

鈥淲hat makes them exceptional is their remarkable capital efficiency and profitability, as seen in companies like Alaan. Great to see companies like Lorum and Lean Technologies that are building critical financial infrastructure in the region. Companies like DevisionX and others are solving real enterprise problems in the region.鈥�

, Angel Investor and Serial Entrepreneur

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鈥淛udging this year鈥檚 entries highlighted just how much innovation is emerging across the MENA region. Despite a challenging global economic environment, founders and businesses continue to develop ambitious solutions across fintech, AI, healthcare, commerce and beyond.

鈥淲hat stood out most was not only the quality of the ideas, but also the strength of execution and the clear focus on solving real-world problems. The future of the region鈥檚 startup ecosystem looks incredibly promising, and it will be exciting to watch these companies continue to grow and scale in the years ahead!鈥�

Gina Marrs, Editor, 91探花

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鈥淭his year鈥檚 MENA 40 reflects a clear shift: the region is moving from isolated wins to real infrastructure. Payments, digital-asset frameworks, and applied AI are solving problems specific to this market: financial inclusion, regulatory fragmentation, and real estate transparency.

鈥淓gypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco are each building distinct strengths, and the companies rising to the top share one trait: they鈥檙e built for scale, not just traction. MENA doesn鈥檛 need more apps: it needs infrastructure. The companies on this list understand that, and it鈥檚 why they stand out.鈥�

Stiven Muccioli, Founder and CEO, BKN301听

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鈥淚t is a strong field, particularly fintech-heavy, showing that the region鈥檚 payments, BNPL, and open-banking rails are clearly maturing. What stood out most to me were the teams tackling hard, defensible problems. Proteinea (insect-based biomanufacturing paired with AI protein design) and Shift EV (home-grown battery packs retrofitting commercial fleets) are exactly the kind of deep tech I鈥檇 love to see more of from MENA.

鈥淥n the commerce side, Toters鈥� execution through Lebanon鈥檚 economic collapse and Chari鈥檚 digitisation of informal retail were both remarkable. Lean Technologies also deserves a mention as the quiet open-banking infrastructure much of this ecosystem now runs on.鈥�

, Founder and CEO, and Applied General Agents

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Thank You To Our Judges

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, Co-Founder, Product Strategy and Innovation at Taxmingo

Ebenezer Ojo is the Co-Founder, Product Strategy and Innovation at Taxmingo, a fintech-driven tax and business compliance platform helping startups and SMEs simplify regulatory processes and scale more efficiently through digital solutions. With a multidisciplinary background spanning business management, project management, customer relations, and entrepreneurship, he is passionate about building practical innovation-led products that solve real business challenges in emerging markets.

Holding both an MBA and an MSc, Ebenezer combines strategic thinking with operational experience to support founders, startups, and growing businesses navigating compliance, growth, and digital transformation. His work and professional interests are centred around fintech innovation, startup scalability, product development, and enabling sustainable business growth across Africa and the wider MENA ecosystem.

Read more about Ebenezer鈥檚 experience and what he鈥檚 looking for in MENA40 entries here.

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, Co-Founder and CEO of

Obinna Umeh is the Co-Founder and CEO of Growwr, an AI-powered hiring and workforce management platform connecting businesses with vetted African talent. Under his leadership, Growwr has grown to serve over 2,000 paying clients across 15+ countries and has received backing and support from leading startup and innovation programs.

Prior to Growwr, Obinna worked in growth and product marketing, helping technology companies scale user acquisition and revenue, including contributing to the growth of products that reached over 100,000 users. He is passionate about building technology that expands economic opportunities and enables businesses to hire and manage talent more efficiently.

Want to know more about Obinna and what he鈥檚 hoping to see in MENA40 entries? Read more here.

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, Angel Investor and Serial Entrepreneur

Furkat Kasimov is an angel investor with over 20 years of experience building, scaling, and advising technology companies. As an angel investor who has backed several unicorns, he has a keen eye for companies with high-growth potential.

Read more about Furkat鈥檚 expertise and what he鈥檚 looking for in MENA40 entries here.

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Gina Marrs, Editor, 91探花

Gina is 91探花鈥檚 Editor, overseeing daily operations are the publications and finding and sharing the most successful and exciting startups, investors and entrepreneurs in different sectors around the world.

With a keen interest in technology and the potential influence of AI on society, Gina aims to highlight both businesses and individuals who are taking great strides towards achieving innovation and change.

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Stiven Muccioli, Founder and CEO, BKN301听

Stiven Muccioli is a tech entrepreneur and investor, and the Founder and CEO of BKN301, the fintech infrastructure provider supporting banking operations across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

Stiven has founded and scaled multiple technology and financial services businesses. He is the Founder of venture capital firm SM Capital and Ventis, a fintech company that was later acquired by Iccrea Banca Group, where he previously served as CMTO. He is also the co-Founder and a member of the Board of Directors of Golee, a Milan-based SaaS solutions company. Stiven also founded Libertas, the first widely adopted news app in the Republic of San Marino, and Tippest, an e-commerce company that he later sold.

Alongside his entrepreneurial activities, Stiven is an active investor and startup mentor. He serves as an angel investor with the Founder Institute of San Francisco, the world鈥檚 largest pre-seed startup accelerator, and has invested in startups including RealtyMogul, Andalin and MallIQ. He was also an early investor in companies including SpaceX, Nubank and Palantir. Stiven holds a master鈥檚 degree from INSEAD and serves as Special Envoy for Innovation & Economic Development for the Republic of San Marino.

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, Founder and CEO, and Applied General Agents

Taiwo Akinropo is the Founder and CEO of Heyfood, the first African food delivery company backed by Y Combinator. As the first engineer in the company鈥檚 early days, he wrote the first version of the product and has since led Heyfood to more than 鈧�5 billion in transactions and over 250,000 downloads, raising capital from Y Combinator, Goodwater Capital, Ventures Platform, Olumide Soyombo, Oo Nwoye, and a number of angel investors.

He also helped build Serveet, Heyfood鈥檚 sister product, a point-of-sale platform that has processed over 鈧�4 billion in transactions.

Taiwo is now building Applied General Agents, an AI lab focused on software agents that handle real work for people. Its first product, Someone@, is a personal AI team that handles your finances, health, calendar, and more.

As a founder operating across consumer technology, marketplaces, payments, AI, and emerging-market infrastructure, Taiwo brings practical experience in building and scaling technology companies in complex, high-growth markets. He is especially interested in helping founders navigate the messy stretch between an idea and their first paying customers.

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Get to know Taiwo and what he鈥檚 looking for as a judge here

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Co-Founders:听Ismael Belkhayat (CEO), Sophia Alj (COO)

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About Chari

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Chari is a Moroccan B2B e-commerce and fintech startup that digitises the supply chain for traditional 鈥渉anout鈥� (corner shops) across North and West Africa. The platform allows small retailers to order fast-moving consumer goods directly from suppliers via a mobile app, with next-day delivery, while also providing embedded financial services such as working capital loans and digital payments.

Founded in 2020 by former consultants Ismael Belkhayat (BCG) and Sophia Alj (McKinsey), Chari has evolved beyond pure distribution into a broader merchant super-app combining commerce, credit, and financial infrastructure. The company is part of the wave of African 鈥渃ommerce + fintech鈥� startups building rails for informal retail economies.

Headquartered in Casablanca, Chari serves hundreds of thousands of merchants and is expanding across Francophone Africa, aiming to formalise fragmented retail supply chains and improve access to finance for underserved shop owners.

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Co-Founders:听Mahmoud Eljendy (CEO) and Abdulaziz Elgammal (CTO/CPO)

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About Proteinea

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Proteinea is an Egyptian biotechnology startup developing a novel biomanufacturing platform that uses insects as biological production systems. Based in Cairo, the company aims to reduce the cost and complexity of producing recombinant proteins, which are used across pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and industrial biotechnology.

Rather than relying on traditional fermentation and cell-culture systems, Proteinea uses mass-reared insect larvae as 鈥渕ini biofactories鈥� capable of producing proteins more efficiently and at lower cost. This approach has attracted attention from international biotech investors and accelerators, helping position Proteinea among the most innovative deep-tech startups emerging from the MENA region.

The company represents a growing trend of science-driven startups from North Africa tackling global challenges through advanced biotechnology. By combining biological engineering with scalable manufacturing techniques, Proteinea is building technology that could have applications far beyond the region while contributing to Egypt鈥檚 increasingly sophisticated startup ecosystem.

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Co-Founders:听Ziyad Matar (CEO), Mark Chahwan (CTO), Muzaffar Rizvi

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About Sarwa

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Sarwa is a Dubai-based fintech startup offering automated investing, savings, and wealth management services. The platform combines robo-advisory tools with human oversight, allowing users to build diversified investment portfolios with low minimum deposits. Founded in 2017 by Ziyad Matar, Mark Chahwan, and Muzaffar Rizvi, Sarwa targets young professionals in the Middle East who want simple, low-cost access to global financial markets.

The platform provides ETFs, fractional investing, and savings products, making wealth management more accessible to retail investors. Sarwa is part of the broader MENA fintech movement focused on democratising investment and bridging gaps in financial literacy and access across the region.

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Founder: Huseyin Demir

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About Matbaa AI

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Matbaa.ai is an AI powered web to print platform that takes print buyers and packaging brands from artwork to a production ready order in minutes instead of days. It replaces the slow, error prone back and forth of traditional print procurement with an intelligent self service workflow.

We started matbaa.ai to solve a problem we kept seeing across the print and packaging industry. Most jobs are still ordered through email, phone calls and manual file checks. A buyer uploads a PDF, waits for a studio to inspect it by hand, then discovers errors only after material and time are already wasted. The result is rejected jobs, costly reprints and frustration on both sides.

To fix this we built a production grade engine on a modern cloud stack. The platform runs an automated pre-flight system that detects and auto corrects more than fifteen common file problems, an auto imposition engine that lays out jobs for efficient production, real time pricing, interactive 3D previews for formats such as hardcover, spiral, perfect bind and thread sewn books, and a retrieval based AI advisor that answers technical print questions in plain language. A buyer with no prepress knowledge can now place a correct, production ready order with zero human handover.

The hardest challenge has been technical depth inside a traditional sector. Print pre-flight is unforgiving, since one wrong colour profile or missing bleed can ruin thousands of copies, so building automation that professionals trust meant getting the engineering right rather than just the interface. The second challenge has been adoption, because print is a relationship-driven, offline industry where earning the confidence of studios and buyers takes patience and proof.

Matbaa.ai is live in production and serves the Turkish print and packaging market, one of the largest and most export-oriented print hubs feeding the wider MENA region. Turkish printers supply books, packaging and commercial print across the Middle East and North Africa, and our platform sits directly at that point of demand. By digitising how MENA facing print orders are specified, checked and priced, we help cut waste, shorten lead times and open cross-border print trade to smaller buyers who were previously locked out by the complexity of the old workflow.

Our growth plan is to deepen the AI layer, widen the product catalogue, and extend the platform from Turkey into neighbouring MENA print markets where the same fragmented manual processes exist. The long-term aim is to become the default intelligent layer between anyone who needs print and the studios that produce it.

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Founder and CEO: Ilman Shazhaev

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About Dizzaract

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Dizzaract is a full-cycle AI and gaming development studio based in Abu Dhabi, building an interconnected ecosystem of products rather than a single game or app. What drives the team is a simple conviction: AI is becoming core infrastructure, gaming remains one of the largest digital ecosystems in the world, and the most valuable companies of the coming decade will be built where the two meet.

Dizzaract was founded in 2022, working in stealth on its flagship title, Farcana, before launching publicly from Abu Dhabi in early 2025 as the largest game development studio in the Middle East by team size. Today the studio brings together more than 80 engineers, researchers, designers and operators across 25 countries.

The central challenge was ambition itself. When Dizzaract set out to build a AAA game inside the UAE, there was no established pipeline of AAA studios in the region to draw on. The team built that capability from the ground up, developing Farcana on Unreal Engine 5 to a production standard meant to stand alongside the leading global hero shooters, and securing registered patents for adaptive AI frameworks that let games respond to player behaviour in real time. Coordinating a distributed team across 25 countries, while building original IP and deep technology in parallel, meant the studio had to operate as an engineering company as much as a game studio.

The impact on the region has been twofold. Farcana stands as one of the first high budget games developed in the UAE, helping shift the perception of the Gulf from a market that mainly consumes games to a region that can originate world class IP and creative technology. Around the games sits a growing deep technology effort: FAR Labs, the Dizzaract research division, is building FAR AI, a distributed AI inference network designed to make AI compute more affordable, while GAMED provides an identity and economic layer that brings fragmented gaming data and assets into a single dashboard for players.

Founder and CEO Ilman Shazhaev anchors this work as a United Nations expert under the UNODC programme on AI in developing economies, an inventor with registered patents and a published author of dozens of scientific papers. Under his direction Dizzaract has helped position Abu Dhabi as a credible home for both AAA game development and frontier AI infrastructure, drawing global talent into the region rather than exporting it. The ambition from here is direct: to show that a studio born in the Middle East can compete at the highest level in gaming and in applied AI, and to keep building that future from the Gulf.

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Co-Founders:听Islam Shawky, Alain El-Hajj and Mostafa Menessy

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About Paymob

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Paymob is a financial technology company that provides digital payment infrastructure for businesses across the Middle East, Africa and Pakistan. Founded in 2015, the company enables merchants of all sizes to accept online and in-store payments through a wide range of payment methods, while also offering tools for payments management, financial operations and business growth.

Its omnichannel platform includes payment gateways, point-of-sale solutions, mobile wallet technology and merchant services. Paymob鈥檚 mission is to expand access to digital financial services and support financial inclusion by helping businesses move away from cash-based transactions and participate more easily in the digital economy.

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Co-Founders:听Hisham Al-Falih (CEO), Karim Beguir

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About Lean Technologies

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Lean Technologies is a UAE-based fintech infrastructure startup building open banking APIs for the Middle East. Founded by Hisham Al-Falih and Karim Beguir, the company enables businesses to securely access financial data and initiate payments across bank accounts via a unified API layer. Its infrastructure supports fintech apps, lending platforms, and financial services providers by removing the need for direct bank integrations.

Lean is playing a foundational role in building the region鈥檚 open banking ecosystem, similar to Plaid in the United States. The company focuses on improving financial connectivity, compliance, and innovation across MENA鈥檚 rapidly evolving fintech sector.

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Co-Founders:听Mahmoud Abdelaziz (CEO), Mohamed Rashad (CTO), Samar Hamdy (Chief Business Officer)

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About DevisionX

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DevisionX is an Egyptian artificial intelligence startup specialising in computer vision technology for industrial and enterprise applications. Founded in Cairo in 2017, the company helps manufacturers and organisations extract actionable insights from visual data using AI-powered image analysis.

Its flagship platform, Tuba, allows industry experts to participate directly in AI workflows without requiring advanced machine learning expertise, making computer vision more accessible to businesses. DevisionX has become one of Egypt鈥檚 notable AI startups, participating in international accelerator programmes including Microsoft鈥檚 GrowthX Accelerator.

The company operates at the intersection of industrial technology and artificial intelligence, serving sectors where visual inspection, quality control and operational monitoring are critical. By focusing on practical enterprise use cases rather than consumer AI applications, DevisionX demonstrates how MENA startups are building globally relevant deep-tech solutions that address real-world business challenges while showcasing the region鈥檚 growing AI capabilities.

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Co-Founders:听Abdulmajeed Alsukhan (CEO), Turki Bin Zarah and Abdulmohsen Albabtain

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About Tamara

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Tamara is a Saudi Arabian fintech startup that has become one of the Middle East鈥檚 leading buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) providers. Founded in Riyadh in 2020, the company enables consumers to split purchases into interest-free instalments while helping merchants increase sales and customer conversion rates. Tamara operates across multiple markets in the Gulf region and has become a major player in the rapidly growing embedded finance sector.

The startup addresses increasing demand for flexible payment options among younger consumers while providing retailers with tools to improve customer acquisition and retention. Its rapid growth has made it one of the most closely watched fintech companies in the MENA ecosystem.

By combining payments infrastructure, consumer finance and e-commerce integration, Tamara exemplifies the region鈥檚 broader fintech boom and highlights how local startups are developing financial products tailored to the needs of Middle Eastern consumers and businesses.

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