Investment of $12.5 million spearheaded by Prosus in Intella, a pioneer in Arabic speech recognition technology

Intella, a market leader in dialectal Arabic speech intelligence, has announced the successful completion of an oversubscribed Series A round, securing $12.5 million in funding. The funding round was led by Prosus, with participation from 500 Global, Wa'ed Ventures, Hala Ventures, Idrisi Ventures, and HearstLab.

With this round, Intella has raised over $16.9M in funding. The strategic deployment of these funds will be used to deepen enterprise capabilities, accelerate MENA expansion, and innovate in Arabic-First AI. The company's proprietary speech-to-text models have achieved a global record accuracy of 95.73%, setting a new standard in the industry.

The funds will also be invested in research and development to push the boundaries of dialectal understanding and further widen the accuracy gap against global competitors. One of the key initiatives is the launch of a new conversational AI agent, Ziila, to work in tandem with Intella's intellaCX analytics product, creating a complete product suite for enterprises.

Nour AlTaher, Co-founder and CEO of Intella, stated that the funding allows them to accelerate their goal of helping every enterprise in the region transform their customer conversations. Intella offers enterprise-grade transcription, analytics, and AI-powered customer engagement tools tailored to more than 25 dialects.

The company has seen significant growth, more than doubling its revenue in 2024 and is on track to 7x growth in 2025. Intella supports a significant number of enterprises across the MENA region, spanning various sectors like finance, telecommunications, and government.

The funds will also be used to scale go-to-market teams in Egypt and Saudi Arabia to meet the surging demand from these sectors. Robin Voogd, Head of Middle East Investments at Prosus Ventures, stated that the market opportunity in MENA is enormous and Intella is changing the game in Arabic AI.

Omar Mansour, Co-founder and CTO of Intella, mentioned that the focus now is on building truly intelligent, Arabic-first conversational agents capable of multi-turn dialogue and contextual understanding. Intella was founded in 2021 by CEO Nour Taher and CTO Omar Mansour.

In a significant milestone, Intella unveiled Ziila, its Arabic-born digital human, in a partnership with Jumia, Africa's largest e-commerce platform. Ziila demonstrated its capability to navigate complex dialects in a demanding, real-world environment.

As Intella continues to innovate and grow, it is poised to become a key player in the global AI market, powering a digital AI workforce across the Arabic-speaking world.

Investment of $12.5 million spearheaded by Prosus in Intella, a pioneer in Arabic speech recognition technology