Riyadh – Sharikat Mubasher: Intella, the Arabic speech intelligence startup, announced it raised $12.5 million in a Series A round led by Prosus Ventures, with participation from 500 Global, Wa’ed Ventures, Hala Ventures, Idrisi Ventures, and HearstLab.

According to an official press release, the new funding will support R&D, product expansion, and regional hiring, with a focus on growing operations in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Intella also plans to enhance its conversational AI agent Ziila, designed to process Arabic-first multi-turn conversations.

Founded in 2021 by Nour AlTaher and Omar Mansour, Intella has built AI models that understand more than 25 Arabic dialects with 95.7% accuracy, setting a global benchmark in speech-to-text recognition. Its solutions are already used by banks, telecoms, and government clients across the MENA region.

Prosus’s Robin Voogd said Intella is solving a long-standing gap in Arabic AI, where fragmented dialects and limited data have slowed progress.

Intella’s technology recently powered a voice-ordering feature for Jumia, Africa’s largest e-commerce platform, demonstrating its commercial traction.

With this round, the company has raised more than $16.9 million to date, positioning itself as a leading player in Arabic-first AI.