Dealfuze, a London-based platform with deep MEA roots, today announced the launch of its closed beta waitlist alongside the region’s first algorithmically curated Online Demo Day, taking place on May 20, 2026.
The launch comes at a defining moment for the region. Despite record venture capital momentum, MENA VC surged 74% to $3.8 billion in 2025 and Africa posted its strongest financing performance since 2022 at $4.1 billion; access to capital remains deeply unequal. Africa’s pre-seed funding accounts for just 1.5% of total venture investment on the continent, well below the 4–6% norm in the United States, and over 82% of Africa’s VC flows to just four countries. Across the broader MEA region, the dominant barrier is not a shortage of ambition or talent; it is a structural disconnect between founders and the right investors.
Built to modernise venture discovery across the Middle East and Africa, Dealfuze enables founders and investors to connect based on sector focus, investment thesis, stage, geography, and strategic alignment, replacing fragmented outreach and closed networks with a more intelligent, data-driven matching process.
The platform is sector-agnostic and supports startups across pre-seed, seed, and early-stage rounds.
The Dealfuze Online Demo Day will feature a curated group of startups selected through the platform’s matching engine, which cross-references founder profiles with investor preferences and mandates. The event serves as both a fundraising opportunity and a live demonstration of Dealfuze’s venture discovery infrastructure.
The timing reflects a critical gap in the region’s ecosystem. Whilst MEA’s combined VC market reached $5.3 billion in 2025, this remains a fraction of Europe’s €66.2 billion deployed over the same period. Africa’s pre-seed ecosystem raised just $46.5 million across 281 deals in 2025 ,even as the broader African VC market grew by 40%. The withdrawal of major accelerators, including Techstars and Y Combinator, from the continent reduced private pre-seed investment capacity by more than 60% between 2019 and 2025. Dealfuze enters precisely at this inflection point: capital is growing, but the infrastructure that connects founders to it remains conspicuously absent.
Investors from A-Typical Ventures, Blossom Capital, Emtech VC, Launch Africa Ventures, Pennington Promise Capital, and Shorooq Partners, alongside a broader network of regional and global VCs deploying capital at an average ticket size ranging from $50,000 to $1 million+, have confirmed their attendance.
The event is being co-hosted with Builders Tribe, a leading technology community supporting founders and operators across the GCC and Africa.
Mohamed Al Sheraie, Founder of Dealfuze, said, “The MEA region produced record venture capital activity in 2025, yet the founders who need capital most, at pre-seed and seed stages, outside the four dominant hubs, are still being left behind. We are building the infrastructure layer that makes venture discovery merit-driven and accessible across the region. Access to capital should be determined by the strength of your idea and the quality of your execution, not by geography or who you already know.”
Mostafa Zaghloul, Co-Founder of Dealfuze stated, “In 2025, 49% of MENA venture capital came from international investors, a five-year high, yet the vast majority of MEA founders never get in front of those investors simply because they lack the right introduction. Female founders across Africa receive just 10% of equity funding despite representing over a third of applicants. That is not a talent gap. That is a network gap. Dealfuze exists so that a founder in Nairobi, Casablanca, or Riyadh is discovered based on alignment and potential, not proximity. Access to capital should never depend on who you already know.”
“AI has made building easier than ever. The challenge now is filtering the real signal from the enormous noise,” said Mahmoud Al Anany, CTO at Dealfuze. “As MEA VC hit record levels in 2025, the bottleneck shifted from capital availability to capital connectivity. Knowing which founders merit which investors’ attention, across more than 50 countries, dozens of sectors, and thousands of mandates, is fundamentally an infrastructure problem. Dealfuze is designed for exactly that middle layer of venture discovery.”
Dealfuze was built for the founders who are most often overlooked: those building in rural communities, refugee entrepreneurs, founders with disabilities, female founders, and first-time builders outside the major hubs, not because they lack talent but because they lack the network. Africa’s share of global venture capital remains below 1% despite representing 18% of the world’s population, and only 5% of seed-stage startups ever reach Series A. The barrier is not capital; it is access to introductions. Research from Harvard Business School confirms this dynamic on the investor side too: 65% of venture capital deals involve a mutual connection between founder and investor, concentrating funding within the same circles and archetypes. Dealfuze’s matching engine breaks both patterns at once, surfacing founders on merit and delivering investors deal flow that warm-introduction pipelines would never reach.
