Saudi Startup Think Raises $8M+ Pre-Seed on a 90%
RAED Ventures and Wa'ed Ventures co-led what Think calls the largest AI-infrastructure pre-seed round in MENA to date - a bet that squeezing more work out of existing GPUs, not buying more of them, is the region's cheaper path to AI compute.
Saudi AI-infrastructure startup Think closed a pre-seed round of more than $8 million, co-led by RAED Ventures and Wa'ed Ventures, on a single efficiency claim: its integrated hardware-and-orchestration stack sustains GPU utilization above 90 percent, against an industry average of 30 to 50 percent, which the company says cuts its per-token costs roughly tenfold versus frontier-model pricing.
Traction Desk · 4 min read- Think raised more than $8 million in a pre-seed round co-led by RAED Ventures and Wa'ed Ventures, with Dhahran Techno Valley's Venture Capital arm and unnamed strategic angels also participating.
- The company says its integrated hardware-and-orchestration stack sustains GPU utilization above 90%, against an industry average of 30-50%.
- Think claims per-million-token costs roughly 10x below frontier models from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic; the company has not published a methodology for that comparison.
- Founders Ahmed AlSharif and Ammar Enaya bring enterprise infrastructure pedigrees - Meta, Sony PlayStation Europe and EA Games for AlSharif; Cisco, HPE Aruba and Vectra AI for Enaya - rather than prior startup exits.
- The round funds team expansion, manufacturing scale-up and deployments across Saudi Arabia, the GCC and select international markets over 18 months; valuation and equity terms are undisclosed.
Saudi Arabia's Think closed a pre-seed round of more than $8 million this month, co-led by RAED Ventures and Wa'ed Ventures, on one number: GPU utilization above 90%, against an industry average the company puts at 30-50%. Think and Wamda describe it as the largest AI-infrastructure and deeptech pre-seed round in MENA to date. Founded in 2025 by Ahmed AlSharif and Ammar Enaya, the company is betting investors that squeezing more work out of existing chips - not buying more of them - is the region's cheaper path to AI compute.
The number the round was actually priced on
Think's pitch isn't a bigger GPU cluster - it's a fuller one. The company says its combined hardware-and-orchestration stack sustains GPU utilization above 90%, against an industry average it puts at 30-50%. That gap is the whole thesis: idle GPU cycles are the hidden cost center in AI infrastructure, and closing that gap - not adding more chips - is what Think says lets it price inference at roughly a tenth of what Google, OpenAI and Anthropic charge per million tokens.
Who actually wrote the check
RAED Ventures and Wa'ed Ventures, Saudi Aramco's venture capital arm, co-led the round, Wamda reported. Dhahran Techno Valley's Venture Capital arm and unnamed strategic angel investors joined them. Think, and Wamda, describe the raise - more than $8 million - as the largest AI infrastructure and deeptech pre-seed round in MENA to date; that superlative is the company's own characterization, not independently benchmarked against every regional deal.
The founders' bet: operators, not first-time builders
Think was founded in 2025 by Ahmed AlSharif, its CEO, and Ammar Enaya. AlSharif's prior roles were at Meta, Sony PlayStation Europe and EA Games; Enaya held leadership positions at Cisco, HPE Aruba and Vectra AI. Neither founder is coming off a prior startup exit - the pitch to investors rests on enterprise infrastructure and networking pedigree, applied to a Gulf market where compute demand is scaling faster than data-center build-out.
What the $8 million actually buys
Think says the money goes to three things: growing the team, scaling manufacturing of its liquid-cooled multi-GPU hardware nodes, and continued development of its orchestration software, which it calls ILM. The stated horizon is 18 months, with deployments targeted across Saudi Arabia, the wider GCC and select international markets. Co-founder Ammar Enaya said the company is "seeing strong demand from enterprises, start-ups and government organisations," per Wamda - a claim the round itself is the only evidence for so far.
What's still undisclosed
Wamda's report does not include a post-money valuation or the size of the equity stake sold to RAED Ventures, Wa'ed Ventures or the other participants - those terms are undisclosed. Nor is there third-party verification of the 90%-utilization or 10x-cost figures; both come from the company itself. CEO Ahmed AlSharif framed the market problem plainly: "AI infrastructure today is expensive, inefficient, and increasingly difficult to scale," he told Wamda.
The bet
Two Gulf-institutional VCs and a state-linked oil major's venture arm just backed a 2025-founded company on unverified utilization numbers, with no valuation attached. That's a bet on the founders' operating credentials and on Saudi Arabia's own appetite to build sovereign AI compute capacity - not yet a verdict on whether Think's 90% utilization claim holds up once its hardware ships at scale. The next checkpoint is whether Think can name a paying enterprise or government customer before its 18-month runway is up.
- How much did Think raise and who led the round?
- More than $8 million in pre-seed funding, co-led by RAED Ventures and Wa'ed Ventures, with Dhahran Techno Valley's Venture Capital arm and strategic angel investors participating, according to Wamda.
- What does Think's technology actually do?
- It pairs liquid-cooled multi-GPU hardware nodes with orchestration software the company calls ILM, aiming to keep GPUs busy instead of idle. Think reports sustained utilization above 90%, versus an industry average of 30-50%.
- Is the round's valuation public?
- No. Wamda's report does not disclose a valuation or the size of the equity stake sold - those terms are undisclosed.
- What is the money actually funding?
- Team expansion, manufacturing scale-up and product development, aimed at deployments across Saudi Arabia, the GCC and selected international markets over the next 18 months.