ZAWYA: Think closes MENA's largest AI infrastructure pre

ZAWYA: Think closes MENA's largest AI infrastructure pre-seed round at over $8mln

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia /PRNewswire/ — Think, the Saudi-based company building a new generation of intelligent, unified hardware and software infrastructure for artificial intelligence, today announced it has raised over $8 million in pre-seed funding, marking the largest AI infrastructure and deeptech pre-seed round in MENA to date.

The round is being co-led by RAED Ventures and Wa'ed Ventures, with participation from Dhahran Techno Valley's Venture Capital arm and strategic angel investors. The capital will support team expansion, manufacturing scale-up, product development, and international growth initiatives as Think rapidly accelerates deployments across Saudi Arabia and expands its presence across the GCC and selected global markets.

Think is focused on solving the next major challenge in AI adoption by reducing the cost and complexity of AI infrastructure while dramatically improving efficiency. Its technology combines high-density, liquid-cooled multi-GPU compute nodes with proprietary bare-metal orchestration software, enabling companies of any size to deploy AI models more efficiently, securely, and cost-effectively while maximising all available compute capacity.

Think was founded by Ahmed AlSharif, a technology leader whose career includes senior roles at Meta, Sony PlayStation Europe and EA Games, alongside enterprise technology veteran Ammar Enaya, whose career spans leadership positions at Cisco, HPE Aruba and Vectra AI.

"As the industry moves beyond the race for bigger models and larger data centres, a new age of efficiency is beginning," said CEO Ahmed AlSharif. "AI infrastructure today is expensive, inefficient, and increasingly difficult to scale. Think exists to help organisations do more with the compute they already have, offering an alternative to the industry's current obsession with bigger, faster and more expensive."

Think's approach combines proprietary AI Node hardware with ILM, a software orchestration layer designed to maximise GPU utilisation, lower token costs, and reduce the overall cost of deploying AI. In production benchmark testing, the platform achieved sustained GPU utilisation of more than 90%, compared with industry averages of 30–50%, with a per-million-token cost that's almost 10x lower than the average cost of using frontier models from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

This is all achieved using existing, widely available GPUs, and doesn't require proprietary or specialist inference hardware. The platform will soon support mixed-vendor and specialist inferencing silicon working in tandem for both inferencing and training.

With Saudi Arabia accelerating its ambitions to become a global leader in artificial intelligence, the firm is building what it describes as the engine room of the AI era: the integrated infrastructure layer that powers secure, efficient, and sovereign AI deployments across the Kingdom and the wider GCC.

The company is already engaged in multiple proofs of concept, production deployments, and strategic partnerships across Saudi Arabia, including participation in the Kingdom's rapidly evolving AI ecosystem alongside initiatives such as HUMAIN.

"Our customers want the benefits of AI without the spiralling costs, security concerns, and dependence associated with hyperscale cloud providers," said Ammar Enaya, co-founder of Think. "We're seeing strong demand from enterprises, start-ups and government organisations looking for infrastructure that delivers the performance they need, with an approach that gives them total control and ownership."

The funding brings together investors who share Think's belief that the next generation of AI will be defined not only by more powerful models, but by more efficient, sovereign and economically sustainable infrastructure.

Wael Nafee, General Partner, RAED Ventures: "The next generation of AI leaders will be defined not only by the models they build, but by the infrastructure that makes AI practical, affordable and sovereign. Think is tackling one of AI's biggest challenges with technology that improves efficiency while giving organisations greater control over their AI capabilities. We believe the team is building a category-defining company from Saudi Arabia with global potential."

The funding round comes as organisations worldwide seek alternatives to traditional AI deployment models amid rising GPU costs, increasing concerns around data sovereignty, and growing pressure to both improve the economics and reduce the environmental impact of AI. Think's integrated approach combines hardware, software, and cooling technologies into a single platform that can be deployed across data centres, offices, laboratories, and edge environments.

Eng. Anas Algahtani, CEO, Wa'ed Ventures: "Saudi Arabia has a unique opportunity not only to adopt AI, but to build the infrastructure that powers it. Think is resolving one of the industry's biggest challenges by making AI deployment more efficient, scalable and sovereign, and we're proud to support its next stage of growth."

Faizan Baig, Chief Investment Officer, Dhahran Techno Valley (DTV): "Sovereign and efficient AI infrastructure is foundational to every country's AI ambitions. Think is tackling one of the sector's most pressing challenges by helping organisations deploy and scale AI while maintaining control over cost, security and data."

With the funding now secured, Think plans to accelerate commercial deployments across Saudi Arabia while expanding its platform and international presence. The company plans to expand across the GCC over the next 18 months while accelerating development of ILM as a standalone software platform, supporting Saudi Arabia's ambitions to become a global hub for next-generation AI infrastructure.

Think is dedicated to making AI superintelligence affordable, efficient, and accessible to everyone. Think's unified approach to AI infrastructure combines intelligent software with high-performance hardware to address the most critical technical bottlenecks in AI deployments today, including cooling, power efficiency, and GPU utilisation.

Think was created to empower organisations, enterprises, and governments to achieve true AI sovereignty with full security and data privacy, without relying on traditional data centres or cloud dependencies.

Founded by games industry veteran Ahmed AlSharif (formerly of PlayStation, EA, and Meta) and seasoned technology leader Ammar Enaya (formerly of Cisco and HPE), Think is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

RAED Ventures is a MENA-focused venture capital firm with over $550 million in assets under management. Founded in 2015, RAED Ventures partners with exceptional founders across MENA from seed to growth stages, backing category-defining technology companies and helping them scale into regional and global market leaders.

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 100+ 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. For more information, please visit: https://www.waed.com/

Dhahran Techno Valley (DTV) is Saudi Arabia's emerging hub for deep-tech innovation, bringing together world-class research, industry, capital, and entrepreneurship. Anchored by King Fahd University (KFUPM), DTV is home to more than 15 multi-national research centres and 65 deep-tech startups, and collaborates with more than 20 Fortune Global 500 companies to accelerate the commercialisation of breakthrough technologies. DTV's newly established venture capital arm operates as an independent investment vehicle, backing high-potential local and international deep-tech startups while creating pathways for their expansion into the regional market. Visit dtv.sa for more information.

For more information, visit www.think-ai.com.

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