AI-powered customer intelligence startup Cobi has raised $1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by MENA-focused investment firm Lunara Partners, with participation from Plug and Play, Annex Investments and Spring.
The company will use the fresh capital to accelerate enterprise deployments across the Middle East and international markets, while expanding its customer intelligence, recommendation and decisioning capabilities. Cobi also plans to further automate the workflows connecting raw customer data with actionable business decisions.
Founded by Darren Edmund and Botlhale Mosoane, Cobi is building what it describes as an AI decision stack for customer intelligence. The platform brings together behavioural, transactional, product, campaign and engagement data to help companies understand changes in customer behaviour and determine the most appropriate actions in real time.
Businesses increasingly collect customer information across multiple platforms, but these systems often provide fragmented or even conflicting signals. Cobi aims to address this gap by continuously interpreting customer activity, identifying changes in preferences, engagement, growth and journey progression, and recommending the next best action, product, offer or experience.
“Most data platforms and AI systems still flatten that relationship into transactions, scores and predefined signals, even though the nuance between them is fundamental to building real customer connections,” said Darren Edmund, Co-Founder and CEO of Cobi.
“Our platform builds an evolving understanding of a company’s customers and the touchpoints shaping their experience, then gives teams direction on how to engage, serve and create value for different customer groups.”
Cobi has already been working with enterprises including Mastercard, Emirates Flight Catering, Presight AI and Lari Exchange. The company also recently signed a five-year agreement with eNovate, a subsidiary of Egypt’s eFinance Investment Group, to integrate Cobi’s intelligence infrastructure across its digital payments ecosystem.
The platform operates around a continuous cycle of understanding customer signals, identifying opportunities or risks, recommending actions and delivering those decisions through the systems companies already use. Outcomes are then fed back into the platform to improve future recommendations.
Cobi’s founding team brings experience from major technology, consulting and financial services companies. Edmund previously advised European financial institutions at Deloitte and served as Chief Business Officer at fintech company dropp, while CTO Botlhale Mosoane has spent a decade building and scaling technology across startups and global enterprises, including Amazon Web Services.
Omar Alkhawaja, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Lunara Partners, said enterprises have invested significantly in systems for collecting customer data and executing customer interactions, but the decision-making layer connecting the two remains fragmented and largely manual.
“Cobi is building the intelligence layer that turns customer signals into clear, measurable action, helping companies retain the customers they have worked hard to win and convert customer understanding into commercial growth,” Alkhawaja said.
The investment comes as enterprises increasingly look beyond generative AI applications towards systems capable of continuously interpreting business data and recommending or executing decisions. Cobi is positioning its technology within that emerging layer, connecting customer intelligence directly with enterprise workflows.
