Saudi Arabian NFT marketplace platform Nuqtah has raised seed funding led by Animoca Brands, while UAE-based Al Ansari Financial Services plans to raise up to $210 million in an IPO.
Animoca leads Nuqtah’s seed funding round
Nuqtah has raised a seed funding round led by Animoca Brands, a Hong Kong-based game software company and venture capital firm, according to a release.
Ethereum scaling solutions developer Polygon also participated in the funding round along with regional investors. The new funding will be used to scale up the company’s business over the next 12 months in product development, marketing, talent acquisition, and other operations.
Nuqtah also plans to empower local artists and technical talent to foster the development of a vibrant Web3 industry in Saudi Arabia and the broader region.
“Our investment into Nuqtah is another meaningful step in our commitment to build up the Web3 industry in MENA as well as develop our own capabilities in the region,” said Yat Siu, co-founder of Animoca Brands.
Founded in 2021, Nuqtah is Saudi Arabia’s first NFT marketplace platform. The company aims to catalyse Web3 adoption in the Middle-East region.
Dubai’s first IPO listing of 2023
UAE-based integrated financial services group Al Ansari Financial Services plans to raise up to $210 million in Dubai’s first IPO listing of the year, reported Bloomberg News.
Al Ansari Financial Services is a foreign exchange and money transfer company in the UAE offering financial services such as online money transfers, prepaid cards, and corporate payment solutions.
The company started as an offshoot of a trading business by the Al Ansari family almost 60 years ago and was established primarily to meet the foreign exchange and remittance needs of their trading partners and customers at a time when formal banking was yet to be established in the country.
Al Ansari is offering offers 750 million shares in the IPO in a price range of Dh1-Dh1.03 as it opens for subscription on Thursday, while the final price is to be announced on March 27, according to The Gulf News.
Last month, state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) said it has set a price range for an IPO of its gas unit that could raise up to $2 billion and give ADNOC Gas an equity valuation of $47 billion to $50.8 billion.
Firms from the Middle-East raised around $21.9 billion through IPOs in 2022, which was more than half the total for the wider EMEA region, including Europe and Africa, according to Dealogic data quoted by Reuters.