The Gulf has had a busy funding week. Three startups, each solving a real and specific problem for the B2B market, emerged with fresh capital and clear plans to use it. Between them, Lyrie.ai, eVoost AI, and Comfi raised $69.2 million across pre-seed, Series A, and pre-Series A rounds. The sectors they occupy, AI security, property technology, and B2B payments, are among the most actively watched in the region.
This is not a story about hype. All three companies are post-product and already working with paying customers or live assets on the platform. For more context on where these deals fit in the regional picture, see Dubai Startup Ecosystem Report 2026.
Lyrie.ai: Dubai's Answer to the AI Agent Security Problem
$2M Pre-Seed | Cybersecurity | Dubai
Every enterprise and government entity deploying AI agents, the software systems that browse, call APIs, and execute tasks without a human reviewing each step, is sitting on an attack surface that most security teams have not properly mapped. Guy Sheetrit, founder of Lyrie.ai, puts it bluntly: today's AI agents are effectively anonymous. They can be impersonated, manipulated, or fed poisoned instructions, and the systems they operate in may never know.
Lyrie.ai is the startup trying to change that. The Dubai-based company emerged from stealth this week with $2 million in pre-seed funding and a platform built for one specific job: securing AI agents. The product covers autonomous penetration testing of agentic systems, adversarial red-teaming to simulate how bad actors might hijack an AI agent mid-task, and ongoing vulnerability research specific to this new category of software risk.
At the centre of the launch is the Agent Trust Protocol, or ATP, an open cryptographic standard that Lyrie.ai is proposing for the industry. ATP handles three things: verifying the identity of an AI agent, enforcing what that agent is permitted to do, and detecting if it has been tampered with. The company wants ATP to become shared infrastructure rather than a proprietary lock-in, which is a smart positioning move if the standard gains traction.
Lyrie.ai was built within OTT Cybersecurity, which gives it operational depth from day one rather than the usual clean-slate startup position. It has also been accepted into Anthropic's Cyber Verification Programme, a meaningful endorsement from one of the world's leading AI safety organisations. The pre-seed capital, engineering, and go-to-market activities as the company prepares for a Series A.
LYRIE.AI AT A GLANCE
- Raised: $2 million pre-seed
- Sector: AI agent cybersecurity
- HQ: Dubai, UAE
- Founder: Guy Sheetrit
- Built by: OTT Cybersecurity
- Accepted into: Anthropic Cyber Verification Programme
- Key product: Agent Trust Protocol (ATP), an open cryptographic standard for AI agent identity and scope enforcement
eVoost AI: Abu Dhabi Proptech That Already Has $3.5B in Assets on Its Platform
$2.2M Series A | PropTech | Abu Dhabi
Residential property developers in the UAE spend heavily on sales infrastructure, show apartments, broker commissions, and marketing campaigns, yet conversion rates through the traditional funnel remain inefficient. Unsold inventory sits for months. Leads go cold. The process is relationship-dependent in ways that do not scale well.
eVoost AI was founded in 2024 to fix the developer side of that problem. The Abu Dhabi startup uses predictive analytics to identify which buyers are most likely to convert, and automation to ensure the right follow-up happens at the right moment. The founders describe the platform as an intelligent operating system for residential commercialisation, which is a reasonable description for a product that already supports the commercialisation of over $3.5 billion in residential real estate assets.
That last figure is the most important number in the announcement. A two-year-old startup with that level of asset exposure on the platform is not pitching a concept; it is reporting traction. First Drop VC led the $2.2 million Series A with participation from Qora71, the investment syndicate operated by Hub71 in Abu Dhabi and backed by Mubadala Investment Company. Strategic and angel investors with UAE and Romanian market exposure also joined.
READ ALSO: How to Apply for Hub71 Abu Dhabi: Eligibility, Process, and What Founders Say
Founded by Cristian Pastrana and Koh Onozawa, eVoost AI will use the capital to deepen operations across Spain, Portugal, the UAE, and the United States, four markets with active residential developer pipelines and an appetite for tools that make the sales process measurably faster.
EVOOST AI AT A GLANCE
- Raised: $2.2 million Series A (EUR 2 million equivalent)
- Lead investor: First Drop VC
- Co-investor: Qora71 (Hub71 / Mubadala-backed syndicate)
- Founded: 2024, by Cristian Pastrana and Koh Onozawa
- HQ: Abu Dhabi, UAE
- Assets supported: Over $3.5 billion in residential real estate
- Target markets: Spain, Portugal, UAE, United States
Comfi: The UAE Fintech Solving a $65M-Sized Cash Flow Problem for MENA's SMEs
$65M Pre-Series A | B2B Fintech / Embedded Finance | Dubai
Here is the problem that Comfi is built around. A supplier sells to a business buyer who wants 60 or 90 days to pay. That is standard commercial practice across the region. But the supplier needs to pay wages, restock, and cover operations now, not in three months. Traditional bank financing has been too slow and too paper-heavy to bridge that gap for most SMEs. The result is a persistent cash flow crunch that costs small businesses deals and growth.
Comfi's solution sits at the point of invoicing. The supplier offers the buyer their preferred payment terms, up to 90 days. Comfi pays the supplier within 24 hours. The buyer repays Comfi on schedule. The underwriting that makes this viable at scale is AI-driven, analysing invoice data, payment behaviour, and commercial signals rather than relying on blunt credit scoring. That allows Comfi to extend financing to businesses that banks typically turn away.
The pre-Series A round totals $65 million, and the structure matters. It combines equity with two separate debt facilities because a lending-based fintech cannot scale its loan book on equity alone. The equity portion was led by Iliad Partners, with Yango Ventures and Raw Ventures participating. Debt came from a Partners for Growth credit facility, a mezzanine facility structured by Shorooq, and a regional family office.
READ ALSO: How to Raise a Seed Round in the UAE 2026: The Complete Founder's Guide
Founded in 2023 by Alisher Akbarov, Amal Abdullaev, and Sanjar Samiev, Comfi has already processed over 15,000 invoices for more than 1,000 clients. That is a meaningful throughput figure for a company barely three years old, operating in a market where financial infrastructure adoption has historically been slow. The capital will fund product expansion, underwriting capabilities, and a broader push into MENA markets.
COMFI AT A GLANCE
- Raised: $65 million pre-Series A (equity plus debt)
- Equity lead: Iliad Partners
- Equity co-investors: Yango Ventures, Raw Ventures
- Debt: Partners for Growth (credit facility), Shorooq (mezzanine), regional family office
- Founded: 2023, by Alisher Akbarov, Amal Abdullaev, and Sanjar Samiev
- HQ: Dubai, UAE
- Clients: Over 1,000
- Invoices processed: Over 15,000
- Buyer payment terms: Up to 90 days
- Supplier settlement: Within 24 hours
What These Three Deals Say About the UAE Right Now
Taken together, these rounds are a useful signal about where the Gulf startup market is heading. Lyrie.ai is building infrastructure for a security category that barely existed 18 months ago, and doing it from Dubai rather than Silicon Valley. eVoost AI is applying AI to one of the region's most valuable industries with live, real-money assets already on the platform. Comfi is doing what the best fintech companies do: removing a genuinely painful operational friction for a large and underserved market.
None of these is pre-revenue bets. All three have customers, traction, and a specific use of capital. That is the kind of deal flow that builds lasting ecosystems. For a broader picture of where the UAE startup market stands today, see the Dubai Startup Ecosystem Report 2026, and for coverage of UAE AI investment trends.
