STV’s Emerging Tech & AI Fund welcomes backing from global alternative investment manager, Arcapita

[Riyadh, September 2026] – STV, the emerging market venture capital tech investor, announced today that Arcapita, the global alternative investment firm, has invested in its Emerging Tech & AI Fund, backing both where AI is taking the region and STV as the partner to get there. 

The fund invests in high-potential, application-layer startups at their earliest stages, with a mandate to accelerate their growth across the Middle East and North Africa and beyond. Arcapita's entry into the fund as an investor adds to a growing base of regional institutional backers, joining Google and a broader group of semi-sovereign and endowment investors already deployed into the fund. 

The strong investor commitment seen in this new fund reflects the growing conviction among the region's established institutions in the potential of application-layer AI. This conviction is grounded in a clear global shift: in 2025, the application layer captured more than $19 billion in enterprise spending, with AI-native ventures outearning incumbents two-to-one. STV continues to see the region's technology ecosystem mature, creating the conditions for exceptional companies to scale at an accelerating pace. The collaboration between STV and Arcapita is also expected to create opportunities to connect emerging AI capabilities with established businesses, supporting potential commercial partnerships, technology adoption and knowledge exchange across their respective networks.

Since its launch, the fund has backed four AI-native startups: Sawt, a pioneer in Arabic-native AI voice agents for customer service and one of the fastest-growing B2B startups in the region; Clarity, an agentic AI platform for customer service analytics serving tier-1 customers at home and abroad; Signit, the leading AI legal startup in Saudi Arabia; and Stream, the billing and payments layer powering Saudi businesses.

About Arcapita 

Arcapita is a global alternative investments firm focused on private equity and real estate, with a track record of over 30 years and a total transaction value of more than $32 billion. Arcapita has offices in the US, UK, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Singapore, as well as affiliated offices in Bahrain.

For more information, please visit: www.arcapita.com

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