Riyadh – Sharikat Mubasher: Wa’ed Ventures, the VC arm of Saudi Aramco, announced it has made a strategic investment in Resemble AI, a California-based company focused on AI voice generation and real-time multimodal deepfake detection, as part of efforts to strengthen AI security technologies in the region.

As per a recent press release, the company previously secured $13 million in a strategic funding round in December, backed by investors including Google’s AI Future Fund, Sony Innovation Fund, Javelin Venture Partners, and Ubiquity Ventures.

The investment comes as AI-generated fraud continues to surge worldwide. Global losses linked to deepfake-related scams exceeded $25 billion in 2024 and are projected to reach $40 billion by 2027. In Saudi Arabia, authorities have been strengthening regulatory safeguards, including the Saudi Anti-Cybercrime Law, which criminalizes the spread of misinformation that threatens public security or national interests.

Anas Algahtani, CEO of Wa’ed Ventures, said the investment reflects the fund’s commitment to supporting technologies that strengthen digital trust and secure AI adoption across the Kingdom. He added that as Saudi Arabia advances AI governance and content authenticity regulations, solutions capable of detecting deepfakes and safeguarding synthetic media are becoming increasingly important.

For his part, Zohaib Ahmed, CEO and Co-Founder of Resemble AI, noted that the Middle East is witnessing a rapid rise in AI-driven fraud, pointing out that deepfake incidents in Saudi Arabia increased sharply last year. He added that organizations across the Gulf require detection tools that can operate on their own infrastructure to identify threats in real time.