Riyadh-based startup Sawt has successfully closed a $1 million pre-seed funding round aimed at scaling its innovative AI-powered voice solutions for customer service. The investment signals growing confidence in homegrown technologies designed to tackle specific regional market challenges.
By the Numbers
- Funding Amount: $1 Million
- Round: Pre-Seed
- Lead Investor: MENA Tech Ventures
- Participating Investors: A consortium of regional angel investors
- Industry: Artificial Intelligence, SaaS, Customer Experience (CX)
The Funding Details
The pre-seed round was led by MENA Tech Ventures, a prominent regional fund known for backing early-stage deep-tech companies. The capital injection will be strategically allocated to fuel Sawt’s next phase of growth, with a primary focus on expanding its engineering team, accelerating product development, and initiating its go-to-market strategy within Saudi Arabia and the broader GCC.
“Sawt is not just another chatbot; it’s a fundamental reimagining of how businesses and customers interact through voice,” stated Khalid Al-Omran, General Partner at MENA Tech Ventures. “Their advanced conversational AI, specifically tuned for Arabic dialects, represents a significant competitive advantage and addresses a clear need in the market. We are thrilled to support their mission.”
Addressing a Critical CX Gap
For years, businesses in the MENA region have struggled with automated customer service solutions that fail to understand the nuances of local dialects and cultural contexts. Traditional Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems often lead to customer frustration due to their rigid, impersonal nature. Sawt aims to eliminate this friction by providing a more human-like, intelligent, and efficient alternative.
The platform is designed to handle a wide range of customer inquiries, from simple requests like order tracking to more complex problem-solving, freeing up human agents to focus on high-value interactions. This dual benefit of improved customer satisfaction and operational efficiency is at the core of Sawt’s value proposition.
About Sawt
Founded by a team of AI engineers and CX experts, Sawt (Arabic for “voice”) is a B2B SaaS company developing advanced conversational AI for voice-based customer interactions. The company’s proprietary technology leverages Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning models trained extensively on diverse Arabic dialects. This allows their AI agents to understand intent, context, and sentiment with remarkable accuracy, delivering a seamless and natural user experience across industries such as e-commerce, banking, and telecommunications.
Looking Ahead
With this new funding, Sawt is well-positioned to capture a significant share of the rapidly growing digital transformation market in Saudi Arabia and beyond. The company’s immediate plans involve onboarding its first wave of enterprise clients and further refining its AI models. This investment not only validates Sawt’s vision but also highlights a key trend in the MENA venture ecosystem: a strategic shift towards investing in deep-tech solutions that provide localized, high-impact answers to regional business challenges.
Source: Wamda
