Startup Series: Our investment in Saudi Arabia’s Mozn

From the launch of Vision 2030 to various nationwide efforts to diversify its economy, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s government has been heavily invested in driving the economic and social reform in the country over the last few years. In recognition of this future-forward strategy that offers exciting business opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors alike, Shorooq Partners has taken a deep dive on the country and recently invested in a native Saudi Arabian company called Mozn last year.

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Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Riyadh, Mozn is the market leader in enterprise AI technologies that empower organizations with data-driven analytics and customized solutions, with a focus on Arabic Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Finance intelligence. Shorooq Partners believes that its cutting-edge products as an infrastructure solutions provider for startups and corporates will help shape the future of how businesses operate across the region.

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While we look forward to Mozn increase presence in key industries beyond the current focus on the financial services sector, there are two key offerings which we think have the potential to disrupt existing practices and impact change in the years to come. First are their risk management tools and services built on their AI engines, empowering MENA’s financial institutions with anti-money laundering compliance solutions for screening and monitoring customers, as well as helping auto insurers and underwriters overcome the difficulty of risk differentiation, just to mention a few. We believe Mozn’s AI-backed tools and analytics have a potential to service any business that leverages digital data sets to make decisions. We expect Mozn to maintain its market leadership position in AI with their roadmap of new AI products in existing and untapped markets.

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Next is their world-class NLU text analytics solution OSOS, offering the most accurate and scalable Arabic text analytics algorithms. OSOS helps unveil the complexities of the Arabic language for clients in their pursuit of becoming data-driven enterprises, enabling computers to understand human language in unstructured data. Providing innovative, domain-specific models to suit clients’ different needs, Mozn’s NLU engines and insights reflect deep-rooted industry expertise and enable a variety of services ranging from entity extraction within a text and sentiment analysis to question answering, summarization and many more. We are hopeful that Mozn can be the reference and go-to solutions provider for anything related to Arabic language for local and international clients wishing to do business in the region, and are excited about the prospect of offering this service to other languages.

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More importantly, Mozn has a bright future ahead as it represents one of the strongest and distinguished AI founding teams in Saudi, led by Dr. Khaled Al-Ghoneim (co-founder & Chairman) and Dr. Mohammed Alhussein (co-founder & CEO). Dr. Khaled and Dr. Mohammed are very experienced founders with a demonstrated history of working in the IT services industry – Dr. Khaled has previously founded ELM, the largest technology company in Saudi that went public this year with over 3000+ employees and also served as the group CEO at the Gulf’s No.1 telecoms operator Saudi Telecom Co. Dr. Mohammed was also one of the first few team members to join ELM back in 2002. Having backed many infrastructure plays in fintech and logistics, we are greatly inspired by the founding team’s high vision, dedication and commitment to the information technology sector and look forward to working with innovative risk takers who do not settle for ‘good enough.’

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As Saudi Arabia continues to drive future growth via unprecedented reform initiatives, an infrastructure layer company that delivers true impact through data like Mozn will be increasingly vital. Boasting a highly prominent team of founders as well as unique technological expertise spanning the areas of finance, data analytics, and AI, Mozn will continue to drive innovation in the startup space. We are confident that its unique services and products through advanced analytics and algorithms will become essential building blocks across multiple sectors in Saudi Arabia and beyond.

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Do you have difficulties incorporating data and AI technologies to maximize value? What kinds of data-backed developments do you want to see to have tangible impact on your organization? Let us know so we can help Mozn deliver successful products as their partners and investors. We will not stop in our ongoing efforts to expand – within and outside of our portfolio.

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