Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia is the top-ranked country in the MENA region in terms of Venture Capital funding in the first half of 2023, with a deployment of $446M (SAR 1.67 billion).
According to a report published by the venture data platform MAGNiTT, the Kingdom accounted for 42 percent of the total capital deployed in the region during H1 2023, up from 31 percent in 2022.
E-commerce and retail were the highest sector in the Kingdom by the amount of funding and by number of deals in H1 2023. The sector accounted for 83 percent of total funding with $368M (SAR 1.38 billion) aggregated across 11 deals.
“The Kingdom’s leading position in the VC scene in the region comes as a result of the many governmental initiatives launched to stimulate the VC and startups ecosystem within the Saudi Vision 2030 programs, in addition to the emergence of active investors from the private sector as well as innovative entrepreneurs,” Dr Nabeel Koshak, CEO and Board Member at SVC, said.
SVC is a government investment company established in 2018 that has invested in 43 funds which, in turn, have invested in 674 companies through 1,257 deals.