- Wa’ed Ventures, Saudi Aramco’s $500 million venture capital arm, has made a strategic investment in Ori to drive the startup’s localization in Saudi Arabia while powering AI innovation across the MENA region, beginning with the launch of its subsidiary in Riyadh in the coming months.
- The strategic backing is a show of support in the UK’s leading provider of cloud infrastructure for AI model training, inference, and deployment, which this year became one of the UK’s first companies to deploy Nvidia’s H200 chips.
17 February 2025, London – Ori, the UK’s leading provider of cloud infrastructure for AI, has secured a key strategic investment from Wa’ed Ventures, Saudi Aramco’s venture capital arm, as it eyes up explosive growth in the Middle East market over the coming 12 months. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.
The announcement comes hot on the heels of news that Ori was one of the UK’s first AI infrastructure companies to deploy Nvidia’s H200 chips as the startup positions itself as the go-to AI infrastructure provider of choice in the UK, Middle East, and globally.
Ori is a UK-based startup that enables large-scale AI model training, inference, and deployment for large corporates, enterprises, and fast-growth AI scaleups through its cloud platform. Since launch in 2019, the business has rapidly scaled to a presence in over 20 locations, predominantly across North America and Europe.
Now the fast-growth startup is eyeing a rapid growth into the Middle East as the region’s demand for AI infrastructure balloons. With Wa’ed Ventures’ strategic backing, Ori will accelerate its localization in Saudi Arabia, where it will power AI innovation across the region.
Ori’s localization in Saudi Arabia will kick off with the launch of a regional subsidiary based in Riyadh. The new subsidiary will focus on fostering talent as a direct contribution to supporting the country’s Vision 2030 initiative to advance technology and innovation.
Wa’ed Ventures is the VC arm of Saudi Aramco, the petroleum and natural gas giant – the world’s fourth largest company by revenue as of 2024. The $500 million fund invests in industry-leading tech startups across various technology verticals.
The Saudi Arabian fund moved its sights internationally in 2022, looking for founders who can localize leading technology platforms and services into the Saudi Arabian market as the nation seeks to strengthen its capabilities in key technology verticals such as artificial intelligence.
The fund has recently backed startups including the AI chipmaker Rebellions, and real estate fintech company Stake.
Founder and CEO of Ori, Mahdi Yahya, said: “We are thrilled to welcome Saudi Aramco’s VC fund Wa’ed Ventures as a strategic investor in Ori. This partnership not only provides us with the resources to scale faster into the Middle East, but also aligns with our vision to provide end-to-end AI infrastructure for innovators and businesses around the world.”
CIO of Wa’ed Ventures, Muhammed Zeeshan Hassan, said: “At Wa’ed Ventures, we seek to empower pioneering startups that bring transformative technologies to the local and regional market. Our investment in Ori reflects our commitment to advancing AI and high-performance computing infrastructure. As demand for GPU cloud solutions accelerates, Ori’s technology enables businesses to scale AI workloads efficiently. This partnership will also provide our AI portfolio companies with cutting-edge cloud infrastructure, ensuring they have the computing power needed to build and scale transformative AI solutions. We are excited to support Ori’s vision in shaping the future of AI-driven computing”.
ABOUT ORI
Ori is the UK’s leading AI infrastructure provider, providing AI compute resource and services to large corporates, enterprises and fast-growth AI scaleups. Founded in 2019, the startup now operates in over 20 locations worldwide. Ori’s AI-native infrastructure is designed to meet the demands of large-scale AI model training, inference, and deployment while prioritising scalability, flexibility, and efficiency across industries.
ABOUT WA’ED VENTURES
Wa’ed Ventures is a $500 million institutional venture capital firm wholly owned by Aramco to promote economic diversification and new business growth in the Kingdom by investing in high-growth tech startups across multiple sectors. Established in 2013, Wa'ed Ventures manages a portfolio of 75+ startups, providing end-to-end support to startups from funding to providing access to partner resources. The company is located in the city of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
