Intella has raised $12.5 million (about AED 45.9 million) in an oversubscribed Series A led by Prosus. 500 Global, Wa’ed Ventures, Hala Ventures, Idrisi Ventures and HearstLab also joined. The company will invest in R&D, expand products, and hire across the region.
The focus stays on Arabic speech tech that handles more than 25 dialects, with enterprise features for contact centres in the MENA region. The announcement was made on 2 September 2025.
Intella closed a $12.5m round led by Prosus.
- Round size: $12.5m (≈ AED 45.9m)
- New total raised: $16.9m (≈ AED 62.1m)
- Lead investor: Prosus
- Other investors: 500 Global, Wa’ed Ventures, Hala Ventures, Idrisi Ventures, HearstLab
Prosus leads the round, signalling confidence in Arabic-first AI. Other regional and global investors also took part. The raise provides Intella with fresh capital to scale its engineering and go-to-market operations across the MENA region. For UAE readers, the AED figures reflect the long-standing USD/AED peg, so budgets map cleanly to local planning.
Arabic is not one language in practice.
- Everyday speech uses local dialects, not Modern Standard Arabic
- Over 25 primary dialects plus many sub‑dialects
- Generic models miss context and phonetics in real calls
- Intella’s ASR reports 95.73% accuracy
Contact centres in the UAE, KSA, and the wider MENA region handle mixed dialects within the same call. That breaks many off‑the‑shelf models. Intella says its dialect-aware approach is tuned for real-world audio, accents, and code-switching. The reported 95.73% accuracy suggests lower manual QA time and faster insight extraction from call logs.
The product stack: ASR, analytics and Ziila
- Speech‑to‑text models for Arabic dialects
- intellaCX for analytics and quality control
- Ziila, an Arabic‑born digital human for multi‑turn voice dialogue
- Early deployment with Jumia for voice ordering
The company positions the ASR as the base layer. intellaCX sits on top to analyse conversations for service quality, compliance and trends. Ziila then takes action: a voice agent that handles orders and support in dialectal Arabic. A recent launch with Jumia shows the system operating in production with high call variance.
Growth and regional focus
- Serving enterprises across finance, telecoms and government
- Revenue more than doubled in 2024
- Targeting 7x growth in 2025
- Hiring plans across Egypt and Saudi Arabia
The market size is large and fragmented. Enterprises need accurate transcription and analytics before they can roll out voice agents at scale. Intella plans to grow sales in Egypt and Saudi Arabia to meet demand from regulated sectors. The UAE is a natural hub, given its regional headquarters and multilingual operations.
More on Tbreak
What the funding will be used for
- Deepen enterprise features across the stack
- Accelerate MENA go‑to‑market in Egypt and Saudi Arabia
- Invest in Arabic‑first R&D to widen the accuracy gap
Expect faster model upgrades, closer integrations with contact centre tooling, and more language coverage for dialects and sub‑dialects. The company frames the goal as a “digital AI workforce” that can understand and act in Arabic across industries.
FAQs
How much did Intella raise, and who led the round?
Intella raised $12.5 million (about AED 45.9 million) in a Series A led by Prosus, with 500 Global, Wa’ed Ventures, Hala Ventures, Idrisi Ventures and HearstLab joining.
What products does Intella offer today?
A dialectal Arabic ASR engine, the intellaCX analytics suite, and Ziila, an Arabic‑born digital human for multi‑turn voice interactions.
Where is Intella expanding next?
Go‑to‑market teams are scaling in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, targeting finance, telecoms and government customers across MENA.
