RAED Ventures

RAED Ventures (رائد فنتشرز) is an early-stage venture capital firm headquartered in Riyadh that invests in technology companies in the Middle East and North Africa and describes its focus as Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC.¹ Omar Almajdouie, Saed Nashef and Talal Alasmari are its founding partners. The team page live on October 13, 2026 lists Wael Nafee as general partner, and Kushal Shah, Khalid bin Bader Al Saud and Abdulrahman Alfozan as venture partners.¹

Founding and founders

Raed's Arabic team page, captured in May 2023, says Omar Almajdouie began establishing and launching the firm at the end of 2015.² A listing for the firm on the Jada Fund of Funds portfolio page names the management team as Omar Almajdouie, Talal Alasmari and Saed Nashef and says the firm was established by Almajdouie Holding in 2015.³ Almajdouie's speaker biography for the RLC Global Forum says he founded the firm in 2016 as part of Almajdouie Holding's diversification strategy, that its assets under management exceed SAR 500 million, that it is backed by "PIF's Jada, SVC, Mubadala, Almajdouie Holding and many more," and that it has funded more than 40 startups. The same biography lists him as vice chairman of the Saudi Venture Capital and Private Equity Association.⁴ A profile in Entrepreneur Middle East dated February 23, 2026 says the firm was founded in 2016 as one of the Kingdom's first privately owned venture capital funds and has three funds and more than 60 portfolio companies.⁵

The live team page describes the three founding partners as follows. Almajdouie has two decades of senior leadership experience and over a decade in venture investing, was chief executive of Almajdouie Manufacturing before establishing Raed, and sits on the boards of Majd Investments, Lean Technologies, Mozn and the Middle East Venture Capital Association. Nashef co-founded Sadara Ventures, described as one of the region's first venture capital firms and the first to launch a fund established in Palestine in 2011, whose investors the page lists as Cisco, the European Investment Bank, Soros and Google.org; he began as a software engineer at Microsoft in 1994 and in 2011 became the first Kauffman Fellow in the Arab Middle East. Alasmari co-founded Tarmeez, Lamma and Modha, the last of which the page says was acquired by a Saudi family office in 2014, and represents Raed on the boards and committees of Wafeq and Rabbit.¹ A DealStreetAsia item of May 25, 2023 carries a photograph captioned "Saed Nashef, founding partner, Raed Ventures."⁶

Funds and vintages

The firm's vehicles appear in investor records as RAED II LP and RAED III LP.

• Fund I: the firm began at the end of 2015 or in 2016 (see above), and the Entrepreneur Middle East profile counts three funds in all.²⁵
• RAED II LP: the Jada listing gives a vintage year of 2020 and a fund size of 562.5, with no currency or unit stated beside the figure, and states "Jada invested in RAED II LP in 2020." The header of the same Jada page gives Jada's own totals as 36 funds invested and SAR 3.1 billion committed capital.³
• RAED III LP: DealStreetAsia reported on May 25, 2023 that the firm had kicked off fundraising for a third vehicle; the report states "The $150-million fund will invest in early-stage startups in the MENA region."⁶ Riyadh Valley Company, the investment arm of King Saud University, announced on September 3, 2024 that it had invested in RAED III LP. The release describes the firm as focusing on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, in fintech, transportation services and retail, with an emphasis on software-as-a-service models. Its chief executive, Dr. Khalid Al-Saleh, said the investment fell within the company's specialization and contributed to the development of the local knowledge economy.⁷ The Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC) announced in December 2024 that it had invested, for an undisclosed amount, in Raed III L.P., described as an early-stage fund for tech-enabled startups, particularly in fintech, enterprise software and B2B SaaS, with a focus on Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Its chief executive and board member, Nabeel Koshak, said the investment aligns with the company's strategy of backing private funds.⁸ The Arabic financial daily Al Iqtisadiah reported the same investment on December 19, 2024 and described SVC as founded in 2018 and as a subsidiary of Bank Al-Mensha'at, the small and medium enterprise bank, which belongs to the National Development Fund.⁹

Saudi government-linked investors

Jada was established by a decision of the Council of Ministers in 2016 with a starting capital of SAR 4 billion, and it is owned by the Public Investment Fund. Its mandate is to invest in private equity and venture capital funds that support small and medium enterprises.¹⁰ Its investment in RAED II LP dates from 2020.³ SVC invested in Raed III from December 2024 and sits under the SME bank, which Al Iqtisadiah places within the National Development Fund.⁸⁹ Riyadh Valley Company, an investor in Raed III from September 3, 2024, describes itself as the investment arm of King Saud University, a public university.⁷ Almajdouie's biography adds Mubadala of Abu Dhabi to the list of backers.⁴ The firm's own founding sponsor is the Almajdouie group, which the Jada listing names as the entity that established the firm.³

Saudi Aramco co-led the $5.5 million investment in Lamaa with Raed Ventures, which the firm's news page lists under December 1, 2021.¹¹

Jada and SVC Governance

The chairman of Jada Fund of Funds is listed on the company's own leadership page as Omar Al-Madhi, who is described there as "the Co-head of MENA Direct Investments at the Public Investment Fund." The vice chairman is Eyas Al-Dossari. The same page lists Hani Enaya as a board member and describes him as "Chief Investment Officer at Sanabil Investments, Vice Chairman of the Saudi Venture Capital Company, and a founding member of the Saudi Venture Capital and Private Equity Association."¹² The page lists Bandr Alhomaly as presiding chief executive officer.¹² The company's own history page states that Jada was "established by the Public Investment Fund (PIF)."¹³

On June 3, 2026, the board of Saudi Venture Capital Company issued a decision appointing Nora Al-Sarhan as chief executive, effective July 1, 2026. The article states that Nabeel Koshak will remain a member of the board.¹⁴

The SuperReturn Saudi Arabia speaker profile gives Al-Madhi as "Chairman of the Board and Chairman of the Remuneration & Nominations Committee of Jada the Fund of Funds."¹⁵ Jada's history page lists the appointment of "Jada's Chairman Mr. Mazen Aljubeir" in a timeline running from 2018, and an Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington analysis of February 24, 2020 names Mazen al-Jubeir, managing director of Jawaris Limited and a board member of the Public Pension Agency, as chairman.¹³¹⁶

Partners and team

The team page live on October 13, 2026 lists these roles.¹ Omar Almajdouie, Saed Nashef and Talal Alasmari are founding partners. Wael Nafee is general partner, formerly vice president of product at Careem, and a founder of a startup that the page describes as the first MENA startup to join the Y Combinator accelerator. The firm announced his appointment as partner on November 8, 2021.¹⁷

Venture partners, with the dates on the firm's own announcements:

• Prince Khalid bin Bader Al Saud: announced February 6, 2025 (English and Arabic releases).¹⁸
• Abdulrahman Alfozan: announced February 8, 2025 in the English release and February 10, 2025 in the Arabic release.¹⁹²⁰
• Kushal Shah: announced October 9, 2025 under the title "Growth Venture Partner." The announcement says he spearheaded the growth investment team of e& Capital, was a senior partner at Roland Berger advising governments and Fortune 500 companies, and is the founder of Dubai Angel Investors. The team page says he is an economist educated at the University of Cambridge and a chartered accountant, spent more than 20 years as a partner at strategy consulting firms, led the corporate venture fund of e& and deployed USD 180 million there between 2022 and 2025, joined Raed in 2025, and runs a small private equity fund focused on pet care.¹²¹

Husain Fekri is head of investor relations; his biography on the page lists prior work at GIB Asset Management in London, a bachelor's degree from the University of Leeds and a master's from the London School of Economics. The team also lists Yomna Abousamra, senior associate; Uday Singh, Waleed Abdelshafy and Abdulrahman Alhashim, investment associates; Arsalan Yousuf, head of finance and operations; Aashish Dhaawan, head of compliance and risk; and Tausif Qureshi, senior operations associate. Seth Levine, Abdulla Elyas and Tino Waked are listed as advisors.¹

Khalid bin Bader Al Saud

The team page describes Khalid bin Bader Al Saud as a venture partner with "extensive experience and a world class network in investment and startup financing." The same page says he is co-founder and chairman of ClearGrid, an AI-powered collections infrastructure startup, and managing director and vice chairman of East40 Holding, which the page describes as a private institutional family office established in 2025.¹ The firm's English release of February 6, 2025 described him as "MD & Vice Chairman of his family's private office." The Arabic release of the same date gives the same title and describes him as an investment partner.¹⁸

ClearGrid, a Dubai-based company founded in May 2023, announced $10 million in March 2025, made up of $3.5 million in pre-seed and $6.5 million in seed funding. TechCrunch reported that Khalid bin Bader Al Saud co-founded ClearGrid with chief executive Mohammad Al Zaben and Mohammad Al-Khalili, and that Raed Ventures is among its investors.²²

On October 7, 2026, Echelon (company), a Saudi AI deployment firm founded in Riyadh by Khalid bin Bader Al Saud, raised an undisclosed round from East40, RAED Ventures and Avra, with Ben Horowitz and other investors participating. The article says Echelon serves enterprises and government entities and plans an engineering arm and an institute in the fourth quarter of 2026 and a defense division, Echelon Defense Industries, in the first quarter of 2027.²³

Abdulrahman Alfozan

The firm announced Abdulrahman Alfozan as a venture partner on February 8, 2025 in its English release, and on February 10, 2025 in the Arabic release.¹⁹²⁰ The English release described him as then a founding engineer at Nash (company), a five-year senior engineer at Meta Platforms focused on machine learning and data platforms, and a person with roles at Microsoft and SAP who studied computer science and engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The release quotes Omar Almajdouie, identified as founding partner, welcoming him.¹⁹

The version of the team page captured on January 23, 2026 gives his current role as "Engineering Lead at OpenAI, with a focus on AI Agents and the data platform," retains the Nash, Meta, Microsoft and SAP history, and states: "Abdulrahman holds a degree in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT." The page live on October 13, 2026 carries the same text.¹

Two other records give different degree information. The San Francisco Standard reported on October 13, 2026 that his LinkedIn profile lists a master's degree in data science from the University of California, Berkeley.²⁴ The LinkedIn profile also lists MIT projects from 2012 and 2013, among them MAS.863, a digital fabrication course, and Lounge, a web-based housing platform that placed second in the MIT 2013 iCampus competition.²⁵ The DOJ release gives his OpenAI start as July 2025; the LinkedIn entry gives September 2025.²⁵²⁶

Team page history

The firm's roster across archived versions of its site:

• The about pages captured on September 19, 2024, March 22, 2025, May 21, 2025 and August 21, 2025 list Omar Almajdouie, Saed Nashef and Talal Alasmari as founding partners and Wael Nafee as "Partner."²⁷
• The homepage captured on May 19, 2025 lists the founding partners and Wael Nafee as "Partner." The homepage captured on August 21, 2025 adds Khalid bin Bader Al Saud and Abdulrahman Alfozan as "Venture partner" and lists Wael Nafee as "General Partner."²⁸
• The about page captured on January 23, 2026 lists both men as "Venture Partner" and carries the OpenAI wording in Alfozan's biography. The homepage captured the same day adds Kushal Shah and carries the same wording.²⁷²⁸
• The Arabic team page captured on May 29, 2023 lists the founders, Iyad Alharbi as senior associate, Yomna Abousamra, Omar Shargawi and Arsalan Yousuf.²
• The about page and homepage live on October 13, 2026 list Kushal Shah, Khalid bin Bader Al Saud and Abdulrahman Alfozan as venture partners, and add Tausif Qureshi as senior operations associate.¹

The firm's news page, captured on October 13, 2026, lists these items in descending order of date: Think (July 15, 2026), Signit (April 20, 2026), Aya (April 16, 2026), the Kushal Shah appointment (October 9, 2025), ClearGrid (March 20, 2025), Aya (March 10, 2025, two items), the Alfozan appointment (February 8, 2025), the Khalid bin Bader Al Saud appointment (February 6, 2025) and Rize (January 19, 2025).¹¹

Portfolio

The firm's portfolio page, as captured in March 2025, lists 46 companies: 23 classed as Saudi Arabia, 10 as Egypt, 9 as UAE, and one each as USA, Jordan, Bahrain and Pakistan.²⁹ Deals the firm announced or Wamda reported include the following.³⁰

• Signit, an AI contract management company, closed a $15 million Series A led by Raed Ventures in 2026.
• Think (company), a Saudi AI infrastructure startup, closed an $8 million pre-seed round in July 2026. Wamda lists Raed Ventures as co-lead, with Wa'ed Ventures also tagged.
• XSquare raised a pre-seed round in August 2026 with Raed Ventures participating.
• Rize closed a $35 million Series A led by Raed Ventures in 2025.
• Halo AI closed a $6 million seed round led by Raed Ventures with Shorooq in 2025.
• SiFi closed a $10 million seed round led by Sanabil Investments and Raed Ventures in 2024.
• Dawul, a social trading platform, closed a $5 million seed round led by Raed Ventures in 2022.
• Mozn closed a $10 million Series A in 2022 (see below).

Portfolio companies with government or security work

Mozn. Wamda reported on February 4, 2022 that Mozn, a Riyadh company founded in 2017 by Mohammed Alhussein, Khalid Al-Ghonaim, Abdullah Alsaeed and Malik Alyousef, had raised $10 million in a Series A led by Raed Ventures with Shorooq Partners, VentureSouq, Sukna Ventures and others. The release says Mozn had recently launched its Focal AML suite, which "aims to be the one-stop shop for AML compliance and to help financial institutions and governments fight complex financial crimes."³¹ Omar Almajdouie is listed on the firm's team page as a board member of Mozn.¹ Mozn's own industry pages describe a public sector offering for "the work government cannot get wrong," "already proven in the region's top government entities," covering central government and public finance, tax, customs and revenue, regulators, and justice and judiciary, with products for hidden-relationship and network fraud detection and an agentic investigation workbench. A defense page describes an enterprise AI platform for "organizations that are responsible for national security," deployed on-premise or fully air-gapped, covering headquarters and command support, military logistics, the defense industrial base, and "internal security, borders and civil protection."³² The financial-crime product FOCAL was taken to Google Cloud customers in an agreement signed at LEAP in March 2024, and bank customers announced in 2025 include STC Bank and Al Rajhi Bank.³³ On August 4, 2026 HUMAIN, a technology company backed by the Public Investment Fund, announced a strategic investment in Mozn, described as its first investment in a Saudi company, and a partnership whose initial use cases are financial crime prevention, knowledge intelligence and governance, risk and compliance for financial institutions and public sector organizations.³⁴

Crowd Analyzer. The firm's portfolio lists Crowd Analyzer, an Egypt-classed Arabic social media monitoring tool, as an investment of 2016 with the status "Acquired."²⁹ Startup Bahrain reported on August 5, 2018 that the Dubai-based company completed a $1.1 million pre-Series A round led by Wamda Capital with Faith Capital, Raed VC and Arzan Capital.³⁵ Gulf News reported on November 26, 2019 a Series A of more than $3.5 million led by TechInvest with Wamda Capital, Arzan VC, Faith Capital and Daring Capital, for an Arabic-focused platform that "analyses publicly available data from social media platforms and news websites," with funds directed to expansion in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.³⁶ Wamda reported on January 30, 2020 that the company acquired the activation platform TaskSpotting.³⁶

Other entries on the portfolio page that bear on data, finance and government systems: Quant (company), a Saudi consultancy in data science and AI services (investment year 2022); Lean Technologies, an infrastructure developer providing access to consumer financial data (2020); Lamaa, software that manages bank and tax processes for small and medium enterprises (2021), whose $5.5 million round was co-led by Saudi Aramco; and Vectara, an enterprise semantic search platform that the listing places in the USA with a 2020 investment year.¹¹²⁹

United States connections

The English and Arabic sites give an address on Anas Ibn Malik Road, Almalqa, Riyadh.¹ The portfolio page marks one entry as USA, Vectara.²⁹ Wael Nafee's biography says he founded startups in the United States and in MENA.¹ The DOJ release places the executive conference room at issue in the case in one of OpenAI's San Francisco buildings, and Alfozan's venture partner listing on the firm's site runs from 2025.¹⁹²⁶

Abdulrahman Alfozan and the October 2026 arrest

On October 13, 2026 the United States Department of Justice announced that Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, was arrested on October 9 and charged with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications. The release states that he had been employed as an engineer at OpenAI since July 2025, and names Assistant United States Attorney Nicolas Parker for the Northern District of California as the prosecutor.²⁶

The San Francisco Standard reported the same day that the offense carries up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on conviction, and that a detention hearing before Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse is set for October 19. It gives his prior employers as Nash, from 2022 to August 2025, and Meta Platforms, from 2017 to 2022.²⁴

The firm's English about page and homepage, live on October 13, 2026, list him as a venture partner, and his biography gives his OpenAI role and an MIT degree.¹²⁸