The Middle East has massive consumer spending flowing through merchants who have no modern, localised operating infrastructure. Every layer is broken — discovery, payments, fulfilment, identity, trust. Every layer is an opportunity.
AI-native commerce merchant OS / marketplace. Where the merchant runs their business and the data finally compounds.
Product authentication, identity, provenance — luxury, electronics, pharma. Trust as infrastructure.
Search, discovery, personalisation — built Arabic-first, not bolted on.
Shared merchant infrastructure and logistics — the rails the whole category needs.
Whoever owns the merchant's day owns the long-term relationship and the data flywheel. Marketplaces are downstream.
Whoever runs the merchant's day — orders, returns, payments, identity, logistics — owns the long-term relationship and the data flywheel. Marketplaces are downstream.
Authentication, provenance and identity are not features — they're the substrate that flips cash to digital, builds repeat purchase and unlocks luxury / pharma / electronics categories.
Logistics, fulfilment and last-mile infrastructure built for the long-tail merchant — not just enterprise — is the leverage that makes every other layer profitable.
$54B market growing 25%+ annually.
Merchant ops on Excel and WhatsApp.
Arabic-first models finally cost-effective.
Sovereign payment rails and digital ID maturing.
10+ years domain experience
“The $54B MENA commerce market still runs on broken infrastructure — every layer is an opportunity.”
Fellows, corporates and co-investors. The compounding loop only works when all three show up.
Operators with scar tissue inside Commerce. We build the venture together — you keep agency, we provide the lever.
Apply as a Co-Build FellowPilot partnerships with corporates and operators who carry the problem. Real data, real constraints, real value created together.
Talk to usEach cycle inside this POD sharpens the thesis. Get on the inside of the next round before it surfaces externally.
Co-invest with The StudioMENA commerce wins when the operating layer beneath the merchant is locally-built, AI-native and interoperable across discovery, payments, identity, fulfilment and trust.
When a Khaleeji shopper in Riyadh buys from a small merchant in Cairo with one tap, gets the order in 24 hours, returns it without friction and trusts the provenance — Commerce has succeeded.
We're building the layer.
