Saudi-Arabia-based fintech Stitch has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) — the firm’s first investment in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Arbor Ventures, COTU Ventures, Raed Ventures, and SVC also participated. The round brings Stitch’s total funding to roughly $35 million.
Stitch is building an API-first operating system for modern financial institutions, starting in the Middle East. The platform spans the core stack banks and fintechs need to launch and scale products — a general ledger, core database, product-specific software for cards, loans, and bank accounts, and a customizable workflow builder with a marketplace of integrations including KYC and KYB.
The company describes its target as a rare greenfield: in the United States, FIS and Fiserv became two of the most durable software businesses ever built by sitting at the center of every bank’s operations, leaving incumbents with decades of infrastructure debt that now blocks AI adoption. The Middle East presents the opposite picture — Saudi Arabia alone has plans to add hundreds of new financial institutions over the next five years, all of which need core banking software for the first time. The region’s financial-services sector is growing roughly 10% year over year.
Stitch reports more than $5 billion transacted on its platform in the last six months, 10x customer growth in 2025, and 20x revenue growth over the same period. Marquee regional customers include Lulu Exchange and Raya Financing, and the company says it is seeing demand pull beyond the GCC into Africa and Southeast Asia.
The capital will fund product development, deeper GCC and wider MENA footprint, and an expansion of Stitch’s global go-to-market operations. For a16z, the investment formalizes a thesis the firm has been telegraphing for several quarters: that legacy core-banking infrastructure is the binding constraint on AI in financial services, and that the Middle East’s combination of regulatory greenfield and growth-stage demand is one of the more attractive places to capitalize on that constraint right now.
Sources: a16z investment announcement, Wamda, FinTech Global.
