Backing Stream: A Next-Gen Saudi FinTech Player, Built by One of Our Own
STV is participating in Stream's $5.2m seed extension, bringing the company's total seed funding to $9.2m. This one is particularly meaningful: Stream's founder and CEO, Ibrahim Aldlaigan, is a former colleague, and backing our own as they go on to build category-defining companies has become one of the most rewarding patterns in our portfolio.
Most of fintech's innovation over the past decade has focused on how consumers spend. The harder, less glamorous problem sits on the other side of the transaction: how businesses get paid. Saudi Arabia is now one of the most digitised payment markets in the world, with 85% of retail payments being made electronically in 2025, yet the infrastructure underneath recurring billing, subscriptions, memberships, and services, is still largely manual. Most businesses collect upfront because the systems to bill flexibly over time simply do not exist.
Stream is built to close that gap. Founded in 2024 by Ibrahim Aldlaigan, the company is the foundational billing and payments layer for Saudi businesses, automating the entire lifecycle: branded app-free invoices, scheduled and recurring plans, collection through local rails, real-time visibility, and reconciliation. What started with early traction in early childhood education has expanded into school networks, SaaS, and a fast-growing base of vibe coders and freelancers. Customers like Atyab and Riyadh Schools are already running meaningful volume, and the platform is processing millions in monthly payments. The roadmap goes beyond a billing tool: new subscription management APIs let any business compose its own revenue model, and Stream is among the first payments platforms in the region to ship MCP support, designed for a world where AI agents transact on behalf of businesses, positioning themselves strongly to capture the Saudi and regional market.
Our conviction rests on three things. First, the market gap is real and structural. The region's payment rails were built around one-time transactions and upfront collection, not the flexible, recurring, programmable flows that modern businesses need. Whoever builds that layer well becomes deeply embedded in how businesses operate. Second, the product is already pulling demand from segments we did not initially expect, freelancers, vibe coders, SaaS founders, which is a strong signal that Stream is solving a horizontal problem, not a vertical one. Third, and most importantly, Ibrahim. He combines infectious enthusiasm with top-notch product instincts, which together explain how Stream went from a wedge product to a multi-vertical platform with API and MCP surface area in well under two years. We saw all of this firsthand when he was at STV, and watching him build at this pace has only confirmed it.
At STV, we love backing our own. Several of the strongest companies we have invested in over the past few years have been founded by people who once sat on our side of the table, and a number of them have already become category leaders in their respective spaces. Stream is firmly on track to be the next one. We are proud to participate in this round and excited to support Ibrahim and the team as they build the billing and payments layer that Saudi Arabia, and then the wider region, has been waiting for.
Learn more about them here.