Intelmatixa deep tech B2B startup that targets MENA (Middle East and North Africa) enterprises that need assistance leveraging the facility of AI for decision-making has closed a $20 million Series A funding round – one in all the biggest of its kind for a regional company.

The startup, which has offices in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, London, UK, and Boston, US, was founded in 2021 but only launched its enterprise AI platform, EDIX, in March 2024. The company told TechCrunch that it has signed up 10 enterprise customers up to now — but with the brand new funding, it plans to expand to mid-sized and smaller businesses as well.

The global enterprise AI market is forecasted to grow exponentially and reach $68.9 billion by 2028, with a median annual growth rate of 43.9%. BCC Researchwith growth being driven by investments in AI technologies and the increased adoption of AI solutions by companies looking to increase efficiency and remain competitive.

However, whilst the adoption of AI decision-making solutions in business gains momentum, there are various challenges, similar to IBM noticed — including access to AI skills and expertise; data complexity; integration issues; high costs; lack of tools for developing AI models; and ethical concerns.

In regions similar to MENA, the adoption of automated decision-making has been slow because most enterprise AI solutions aren’t tailored to local needs, making them impractical for companies considering AI adoption, according to Dr. Anas Alfaris, co-founder and CEO IntelmatixThis is where the startup plans to step in to help with local data, knowledge, and experience.

“The (Rival AI Enterprise) platforms are designed and trained on US datasets and do not process data that includes MENA contexts. These platforms are also designed for large enterprises that have invested in both infrastructure and teams (data science and AI), which is another major issue in the region as there is a talent gap,” Alfaris told TechCrunch, pointing to companies similar to US-based o9 and Palantir as major competitors.

These are the challenges that Intelmatix set out to address with its flagship AI-based enterprise decision-making platform, EDIX. Alfaris says the platform could be quickly deployed across a wide range of companies and doesn’t require a team of AI specialists.

The startup is currently focused on the retail, logistics and workforce sectors, where companies can gain insight into operational and strategic issues similar to supply and demand, localization, recruitment, workforce planning and scheduling, fleet management and marketing.

According to Alfaris, a series of stores using the EDIX software package could, for example, receive recommendations on the most effective location to open a brand new branch and forecast revenues with 80% accuracy.

“Right now, most enterprises don’t have access to AI capabilities, and we’re giving them 80 percent of that capability. We may not be giving them 100 percent yet, but we’re moving the needle from zero to 80 by making it immediately accessible,” he said. “That’s at the heart of why EDIX is what it is and why we invested in building it in our region… to make AI truly accessible by removing a lot of the complexity.”

The startup’s marketing pitch paints an image of MENA businesses now not having to guess what’s next because EDIX is designed to respond and supply recommendations immediately — meaning it might be used to make each operational and strategic decisions. Alfaris said Intelmatix’s decision intelligence algorithms leverage customer data and other contextual data the startup sources to power the recommendations.

“Decision-making is tightly coupled. You can’t make a marketing decision that will drive demand in your stores without immediately connecting it to your inventory to understand what’s going to happen there. The same goes for your staff and operations. Decisions are tightly integrated. But the little tools that exist today that some entities use are very siloed and very specific to a particular function within the enterprise—while they’re useful, you need a one-stop shop,” he argued.

During a year-long pilot of its technology in the food and beverage sector, Intelmatix reported that demand forecasting accuracy on its platform increased by 15%, waste costs decreased by 75%, additional additional time was reduced by 25% and the platform was able to predict revenue for recent branch locations with greater than 80% accuracy.

The art of decision-making is something Alfaris could be very aware of, having conducted research on the interconnectedness and complexity of decision-making on the Center for Complex Systems Engineering at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) in Saudi Arabia, after leaving MIT, where he earned a PhD in Design Computation and was a member of assorted research teams, including the Smart Cities Group on the Media Lab.

He helped establish the middle in 2012 as a joint program between MIT and KACST, which led to one other program called the Joint Centers of Excellence Program, which conducted research projects with other leading universities and technology companies in the U.S. and the U.K. It was at KACST that Alfaris met his co-founders of Intelmatix, Ahmed Alabdulkar AND Almaha Almalkbefore the startup launches in 2021.

Intelmatix now plans to scale up by targeting large and mid-sized enterprises, in addition to public entities in the MENA region. The recent funding will even be used to expand the platform’s capabilities and reach, according to Alfaris.

“We plan to expand our offering of these packages to provide more decisions and features that we think will be useful to our customers,” he said. “The idea of ​​democratizing access to AI has always been something we’ve been very passionate about.”

The Series A funding round was led by Shorooq Partners and included participation from private and public entities, including Olayan Financing Company, Rua Growth Fund, Saudi Technology Ventures, Saudi Venture Capital Company, Sultan Holdings and Zain Ventures.