COFE Tech Raises Pre-IPO at $178M on Aramco's Wa'ed Lead; 2029 Saudi Listing Target

Kuwait-founded COFE Tech (formerly COFE APP) has closed a pre-IPO round at a $178 million valuation, announced Sept 2, 2026, at LEAP 2026 in Riyadh. The round was co-led by Wa'ed Ventures, the venture arm of Saudi Aramco, and Aditum Investment Management, with participation from Masarrah Investment Company and Alyasra Foods; the investment amount was not disclosed. The company has stated a plan to list on the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul) by 2029, in line with Saudi Vision 2030 ambitions (full statement here). The disclosure matters less for the headline valuation than for what it reveals about how MENA enterprise-software valuations are being priced and financed in a visible pre-listing window.

This note sits in the MENA Fintech & Pre-IPO vertical and is written as research, not as a purchase prompt. Two attributes separate it from a routine funding announcement. First, the anchor investor is a sovereign-adjacent venture arm, which in this region carries allocation and governance signals beyond pure returns. Second, the company has a public valuation trail running to a stated listing target, which lets a reader track how a private mark evolves toward a public one. That combination is rare in the region, and it is what makes the round a research event rather than a press item.

Round structure and the sovereign-VC question

Co-leadership by Wa'ed Ventures (Saudi Aramco) and Aditum, a regional fund partner to global asset managers including BlackRock, places sovereign and strategic capital on the cap table alongside private participation. In MENA tech, a sovereign-VC anchor signals more than a check size: it often reflects policy alignment, regional operating support, and a longer holding horizon tied to national programs such as Vision 2030. The undisclosed investment amount is itself a data point. With the size held back, the disclosed figure is the post-money valuation, so a reader should treat the $178 million mark, not the deal size, as the operative number. The named participants, Masarrah Investment Company and Alyasra Foods, are regional investors rather than global crossover funds, which reinforces the read that this is a regionally anchored, pre-listing structure aimed at a Saudi exit rather than a foreign strategic buyer.

Valuation trail and what a visible path means

Public reporting gives COFE a clear step-up: roughly $25 million in 2019, roughly $40 million in 2021, roughly $100 million in 2023 (the year of Al Imtiaz's $1 million capital increase at a $100 million post-money valuation), and $178 million today. A visible valuation trail matters for a pre-IPO read in two ways. It shows the marks are not a single opaque negotiation but a sequence that a reader can follow, and it frames the pre-IPO round as a bridge to a listing rather than a terminal private exit. If the company lists on Tadawul by 2029, the $178 million mark becomes a reference point against which a public opening range can be judged, giving the private mark forward meaning that a one-off round without a stated listing would not have.

The business

COFE provides intelligent procurement and AI-powered commerce infrastructure, an area its positioning describes as agentic AI enterprises, to 1,000+ businesses across the Gulf and MENA. Its principal markets are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE, and it is widely dubbed the Salesforce of MENA, a label that is better read as a positioning claim than a verified revenue comparison. The procurement angle is the most concrete part of the thesis: it is an enterprise software wedge that ties directly into public and private procurement flows in the region. The agentic AI enterprise thesis, by contrast, is more forward-looking and less evidenced by public reporting to date. A research reader should separate the operational procurement and commerce platform, which is described with specific scale (1,000+ Gulf businesses), from the broader agentic AI framing, which is the forward-looking investment narrative.

What to watch next

• Saudi Exchange listing mechanics: how the 2029 Tadawul target is structured (lead underwriter, share count, lockups) and whether the timetable holds.
• Disclosure of the round size: whether the undisclosed investment amount surfaces in a later filing or press update.
• Saudi regulatory filings: the equivalent of an SEC pre-listing disclosure and what it says about the company's financials.
• Adoption of agentic-AI procurement: concrete Gulf enterprise deployment, not just positioning, that would substantiate the AI thesis.

A sovereign-VC anchor plus a stated Saudi listing makes this one of the few MENA enterprise-software marks that a reader can follow from a private trail to a public one. The operative number for now is the $178 million valuation; the round size and the listing mechanics remain to be disclosed.