UAE-based AI startup Synapse Analytics has raised $13 million in a Series A funding round led by global technology investment firm Partech, with participation from Algebra Ventures and Silicon Badia.
The latest investment brings Synapse Analytics’ total funding to $17 million since its inception in 2018. The company said the new capital will be used to scale its team, accelerate product development and expand its international market presence.
Founded by Ahmed Abaza and Galal Elbeshbishy, Synapse Analytics develops an agentic AI decisioning platform for regulated financial institutions, putting policy control directly in the hands of credit and risk teams.
The company’s platform enables financial institutions to build, test, modify and deploy credit and risk policies while maintaining control over their data, policies and decision-making infrastructure.
“Our mission is to give financial institutions the intelligence and decision infrastructure they need to make faster, more secure decisions to reduce risk, unlock growth and build stronger customer relationships,” said Ahmed Abaza, Co-founder and CEO of Synapse Analytics.
“Partech’s investment reflects the momentum we have built and gives us the backing of a leading global technology investor to pursue the next stage of that ambition,” he added.
Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, Synapse Analytics works with banks, non-banking financial institutions, fintechs and telecommunications companies across the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
The company is focused on addressing a key challenge facing regulated financial institutions as they adopt AI: gaining the speed and capabilities of AI-native models while maintaining control over sensitive data and infrastructure.
Synapse Analytics’ decisioning platform can be deployed within an institution’s own environment, including on-premise infrastructure, private cloud, public cloud, sovereign cloud and air-gapped environments.
Its proprietary AI models can run entirely within a client’s infrastructure, allowing financial institutions to automate decisions across areas including customer onboarding, credit, fraud and anti-money laundering (AML) while maintaining data governance and compliance controls.
The platform also allows credit and risk teams to modify policies and test their potential impact against historical data before deploying them, giving institutions greater control over how AI is incorporated into risk and underwriting processes.
As digital financial services continue to expand, financial institutions are under increasing pressure to make faster and more secure risk-based decisions at scale while complying with regulatory and data-governance requirements across different markets.
Lewam Kefela, Principal at Partech, said the firm is backing Synapse Analytics as it builds decisioning infrastructure for banks and financial institutions across the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
“We’re excited to back Synapse Analytics as it builds the category-leading decisioning infrastructure for banks and financial institutions across the Middle East, Africa and Latin America,” Kefela said.
Meanwhile, Galal Elbeshbishy, Co-founder and COO of Synapse Analytics, said the company is expanding beyond underwriting decision-making to enable intelligent AI agents that can work alongside financial institution teams.
“These agents identify emerging opportunities and risks, help institutions grow their portfolios while reducing risk, and allow them to react quickly as market conditions and borrower behaviour change,” Elbeshbishy said.
The company said its longer-term ambition is to build an AI operating system for the new age of finance, enabling regulated institutions to deploy intelligent decision-making capabilities while retaining control over their data and policies.
