Andreessen Horowitz Leads $25M Series A for Saudi Banking Infrastructure Platform Stitch
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has led a $25 million Series A round for Stitch, a Riyadh-based financial infrastructure platform built to modernise the legacy core systems still running much of the world's banking sector. The deal marks a16z's first investment in the Gulf Cooperation Council, a notable vote of confidence in the region's fast-maturing fintech scene.
The round brings Stitch's total funding to $35 million, following a $10 million seed raised in May 2025. Existing backers Arbor Ventures, COTU Ventures, Raed Ventures and SVC all returned for the Series A. The fresh capital will go toward accelerating product development and deepening Stitch's presence across the GCC and the broader Middle East and North Africa region.
Replacing the fragmented core
Stitch sells financial institutions a single, cloud-native technology stack spanning cards, lending, wallets, deposits, payments and ledgers, all accessible through one integration. The pitch is incremental modernisation: rather than ripping out a legacy core in a single high-risk migration, banks and lenders can adopt Stitch module by module while existing systems keep running.
The company frames this as a precondition for the AI transformation that financial institutions have been promised but cannot reach without modern infrastructure underneath. By replacing fragmented cores with a clean system of record, Stitch argues, institutions finally gain the foundation that artificial intelligence depends on.
"Financial institutions globally run on fragmented, legacy infrastructure that should have been left behind 20 years ago," said Mohamed Oueida, Founder and Chief Executive of Stitch.
A first bet on the Gulf
For a16z, one of the most influential firms in venture capital with more than $90 billion in assets under management, the investment is a deliberate entry into a market it has watched for some time.
"We are thrilled to lead Stitch's Series A, and honored to make this our first investment in Saudi Arabia," said Alex Rampell and James da Costa, the a16z partners behind the deal. "Financial institutions are sitting on decades of infrastructure debt, and that debt is now the biggest obstacle to AI adoption."
Momentum behind the raise
Stitch enters the round with strong traction. The company says more than $5 billion has been transacted on its platform in the past six months, while customer numbers grew tenfold and revenue grew twentyfold across 2025. It already operates across the GCC, Africa, including Egypt and Kenya, and Southeast Asia, with customers spanning lenders, exchange houses and digital financial service providers such as Raya Financing, LuLu Exchange, Noqodi and Foodics.
The raise lands as banks across the Gulf face mounting pressure to modernise ageing systems while regional regulators push digital transformation. With a16z now on its cap table, Stitch is positioned as one of the more closely watched infrastructure plays in MENA banking.
