Stitch, a financial technology company based in Riyadh, has raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company builds what it describes as an operating system for financial institutions, offering a single platform that covers lending, cards, payments, and ledgers. It was founded by people who previously worked at NPCI, FIS, Barclays, Santander, and Azentio. Their core argument is straightforward: financial institutions cannot adopt AI effectively until they have reliable infrastructure underneath.
Most banks are still running on old, fragmented systems. That has not changed much despite heavy investment. According to a 2025 IBM study, only 8% of banks were developing generative AI systematically in 2024, and 78% had a tactical approach. The gap between public ambition and internal reality is wide, and Stitch is betting that closing it starts with fixing the infrastructure, not layering AI on top of what already exists.
The Series A brings Stitch's total funding to $35 million. Existing investors Arbor Ventures, COTU Ventures, Raed Ventures, and SVC participated alongside lead investor Andreessen Horowitz. It is also the first time a16z has invested in a company based in the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Banks spend $700 billion a year on technology worldwide. That figure is hard to reconcile with how slow things still move in practice. Launching a new product at a traditional financial institution can take years. Replacing a core system carries enough risk that many institutions simply avoid doing it.
The IBM Institute for Business Value's 2025 Outlook for Banking and Financial Markets found that only 8% of banks were developing generative AI systematically in 2024, with 78% taking a tactical approach. The reason, as Stitch sees it, is that AI requires a clean, reliable system of record to build on. Without that, the technology cannot deliver what institutions need from it.
"Financial institutions globally run on fragmented, legacy infrastructure that should have been left behind 20 years ago. Now every institution wants to adopt AI, but AI on top of broken infrastructure is a dead end. We built Stitch to fix that, and we're proud to have Andreessen Horowitz alongside us." — Mohamed Oueida, Founder and CEO of Stitch
The new capital will go toward product development, expanding the company's presence across the GCC and the broader MENA region, and building out its global sales operations.
The company's recent numbers are worth noting. More than $5 billion was transacted on the Stitch platform in the last six months. Customer numbers grew tenfold in 2025, and revenue grew twentyfold over the same period. These are early figures for a company at this stage, but the rate of growth is what attracted investor attention.
"Financial institutions are sitting on decades of infrastructure debt, and that debt is now the single biggest obstacle to AI adoption. What Stitch is building, a modern, unified system of record, is what makes everything else possible. We're excited to support them, and honored to make this our first investment in the region." — Alex Rampell, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz
The founding team brought direct experience from some of the world's larger financial networks. Time spent at NPCI, India's national payment infrastructure, and at institutions like Barclays and Santander shaped how Stitch was designed. Rather than adding another layer on top of existing systems, the company built a platform intended to replace the core infrastructure itself.
The platform works in modules. Institutions do not have to switch everything at once. They can adopt one component at a time, which reduces the operational risk that typically makes banks reluctant to change their core systems. The end goal is a single, unified stack covering lending, cards, payments, and ledgers.
Stitch currently operates across the GCC, parts of Africa including Egypt and Kenya, and Southeast Asia. Customers include Raya Financing, the lending arm of Hyundai and Peugeot, as well as LuLu Exchange, Noqodi, and Foodics. According to the company, its platform reduces implementation time by 80%, with institutions going live in as little as 90 days, compared to the 9 to 12 months that traditional providers typically require.
Stitch raised $10 million in a seed round before this Series A, bringing total funding to $35 million. The current investor group combines regional and global venture capital firms.
Andreessen Horowitz manages over $90 billion across multiple funds and backs companies from seed through growth stage, with a focus that includes fintech and infrastructure. This is the firm's first investment in the GCC. All four existing investors, Arbor Ventures, COTU Ventures, Raed Ventures, and SVC, returned for this round.
