Prosus Ventures Leads $12.5M Series A in Intella to Scale Market-Leading Arabic Speech Technologies

Funding will accelerate Intella's mission to build AI models and tools tailored to Arabic dialects, deepen its enterprise capabilities and accelerate MENA expansion

Prosus Ventures today announced it has led a $12.5 million Series A round in Intella, the market leader in dialectal Arabic speech intelligence, with participation from 500 Global, Waed Ventures, Hala Ventures, Idrisi Ventures and HearstLab, the investment arm of Hearst Corporation. This funding brings Intella's total capital raised to $16.9 million.

The investment will accelerate Intella's mission to power a digital AI workforce across the Arabic-speaking world. With this new capital, Intella is doubling down on R&D, product expansion, and regional hiring to bring its vision to life.

Founded in 2021 by CEO Nour Taher and CTO Omar Mansour, Intella has emerged as a clear leader in Arabic speech services, offering enterprise-grade transcription, analytics, and AI-powered customer engagement tools tailored to more than 25 dialects. Its proprietary speech-to-text models have achieved a global record accuracy of 95.73%, enabling businesses to move beyond generic AI and deliver localized, human-like conversations at scale.

Strengthening Prosus' AI & E-Commerce Flywheel

At Prosus Ventures, we invest in technologies that accelerate the future of work and expand the frontiers of e-commerce. Intella represents exactly the type of company we seek to back: a strong founding team with deep AI and ML expertise, a category-leading product validated by enterprise clients, and a massive untapped opportunity in one of the world's most complex linguistic markets. With record-setting accuracy across 25+ Arabic dialects and a roadmap into digital agents, Intella is redefining how enterprises in MENA engage with their customers.

We have strong conviction in the language and voice intelligence space because we see data as the defining moat for the next generation of AI. Our global portfolio reflects this belief. In consumer markets, we've backed Luzia and Zapia, which are reimagining digital assistance and enabling millions of users to interact with AI in intuitive, localized ways. In healthcare, we've invested in Corti and Voa, whose conversational AI is helping doctors and providers deliver faster, more accurate care. These companies demonstrate how specialized, localized assistants can unlock new efficiencies and transform how people work, transact, and access critical services.

Intella extends this thesis into the Arabic-speaking world-bringing the same breakthrough impact to one of the largest and most linguistically complex markets globally. Its deeply localized approach makes it a natural complement to Prosus' broader ecosystems, which span three core geographies: Europe, Latin America, and India. Across these markets, Prosus helps billions of consumers buy, sell, and transact across food, fintech, experiences, and commerce, simplifying fragmented journeys into a seamless, integrated experience.

"The market opportunity in MENA is enormous, with over 7,500 companies and organizations operating across the region and Arabic being the fifth most spoken language globally," said Robin Voogd, Head of Middle East Investments, Prosus Ventures. "Yet Arabic AI models have historically underperformed-challenged by complex phonetics, a lack of standardized spoken Arabic, and limited access to high-quality dialect-specific data. Intella is changing that. We see a lot of global opportunities to build in AI, and Intella is doing just that. We're excited to back the company and support its mission of building AI locally."

This investment also builds on Prosus Ventures' commitment to the Middle East, following recent investments supporting local innovation including Thndr, Zest Equity, Zypl, and Qeen.ai.

Intella Enters its Next Chapter

Intella already serves a fast-growing portfolio of enterprises in finance, telecommunications, and government. The company more than doubled its revenue in 2024 and is on track for 7x growth in 2025. With this new funding, Intella will continue to deepen enterprise capabilities, accelerate MENA expansion, and push the boundaries of Arabic-first AI.

"From day one, our vision has been to bridge the gap between global AI advancements and the Arabic-speaking world," said Nour Taher, Co-founder and CEO of Intella. "This funding from Prosus Ventures, a powerhouse investor with deep operational expertise, is a testament to the technology we've built and the market leadership we've established. It allows us to accelerate our goal of helping every enterprise in the region transform their customer conversations from dark data into a strategic asset."

"This round is a catalyst for our product roadmap," added Omar Mansour, Co-founder and CTO of Intella. "Our models already set the benchmark for Arabic accuracy. Now, we're focused on building truly intelligent, Arabic-first conversational agents capable of multi-turn dialogue and contextual understanding-redefining how enterprises engage with their customers."

Arabic is not monolithic; Modern Standard Arabic is rarely used in everyday speech. Each country, and often each region, relies on its own dialect, creating a fragmented linguistic landscape with over 25 primary dialects and numerous sub-dialects. Intella's deeply localized, data-driven approach positions it as the foundational intelligence layer for Arabic voice and text applications.

Demonstrating this real-world impact, Intella recently partnered with Jumia, Africa's largest e-commerce platform, to launch Ziila, its Arabic-born digital human, powering a new voice-ordering feature for Jumia customers. This initiative reflects Jumia's ongoing commitment to introducing advanced tech-driven solutions that simplify shopping and improve everyday life-an outcome that aligns closely with Prosus' mission of building a connected ecosystem where technology enhances the daily lives of millions of people.