Saudi Startup Wittify.ai Closes $1.5M Pre-Seed Round

Sarah AlHumoud and Nader El-Batrawi, Wittify Co-Founders

 

Wittify.ai, a Riyadh-headquartered AI startup, has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding from Saudi angel investors. The startup did not share the exact details of investors but has told MENAbytes that the investors include high net worth individuals (HNWIs) from Alrajhi, Alsowayan, and Alateeq families. The company develops AI agents for Arabic-speaking markets with proprietary speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities.

Founded in 2024, Wittify operates from offices in Riyadh, Dubai, and Cairo. Its platform, now live in beta, lets businesses deploy AI agents that integrate into workflows and handle voice, text, or multimodal interactions across mobile apps, websites, and contact centers.

The startup’s technology includes Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems trained on more than 25 Arabic dialects. The platform uses a no-code interface that allows businesses to build and deploy AI agents without technical expertise.

Wittify CEO Nader El-Batrawi who brings over 20 years of international business experience, commenting on the occasion, said, “Our goal is to empower organizations with AI that doesn’t treat Arabic as an afterthought, but as a core language, while also enabling multilingual excellence at scale.”

Dr. Sarah Alhumoud, the co-founder and Chief AI Officer of the company, said, “By leveraging top-tier international AI models and combining it with our proprietary Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems — trained to handle the vast richness of more than 25 different Arabic dialects — we’re enabling businesses to create agents that are truly human-like, local, and culturally intelligent.”

She previously led AI initiatives at King Salman’s Complex for the Arabic Language, holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow, and completed postdoctoral research at MIT.

The company currently serves enterprise and government clients, though it did not disclose specific customer names. It is currently part of three accelerator programs in the Kingdom: inspireU from stc, MISK Entrepreneurship Foundation in partnership with Plug and Play, and TikTok’s Blossom Accelerator.

The Saudi startup plans to use the funds for product development, regional expansion across MENA markets, and continued investment in Arabic speech technologies.

Source: MENAbytes