aiXplain, a leading provider of essential infrastructure for accelerated AI development, announced a $6.5 million pre-Series A round to simplify the process of building AI agents and globalize the impact of AI innovation. Wa’ed Ventures (a $500 million Saudi Arabian venture capital fund backed by Aramco) led the round (its first direct investment in a US-based company). And prominent angel investors such as Osama Elkady (CEO and Co-founder of Incorta) and Kane Minkus (global business expert) also participated in the round.
This brings the total funding raised by the company since its founding to $16.5 million. Notable U.S.-based firms Transform VC and Calibrate VC backed the company’s seed round last year. Businesses worldwide are looking to utilize AI for operational and decision-making use cases in AI agents, systems with domain intelligence and the ability to operate autonomously on a user’s behalf. Building AI agents is out of reach for most companies due to the complexity, cost, resources, and talent required across the development process. For others, they lack localized tools to optimize AI capabilities for their region or language.
aiXplain is closing these gaps with an AI development platform for developers and non-technical users which “agentifies” tens of thousands of AI assets to harness their power via simple language prompts instead of lines of code.
Launched in 2020, aiXplain got its start as the innovation partner for organizations such as The Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA) to accelerate AI innovation in the Gulf region. And the company now works with businesses worldwide to build AI solutions efficiently, as well as fine-tune and benchmark AI models.
Users can utilize aiXplain’s custom-built AI assets and third-party assets from OpenAI, Google, AWS, Azure, and dozens of other AI technology providers. With a platform and marketplace that provides access and support for 40,000+ AI assets across more than 55 functions, pipelines, and tools, airplane is the most language-rich hub for AI assets globally and one of the most expansive.
An example of this vision in practice is Bel Esprit, an agentic AI application designed for non-technical users to create more sophisticated AI solutions with a natural language prompt. Currently available in open beta, it acts as an “agent of agents” by combining, organizing, and executing AI assets and tasks. It understands and decomposes complex queries, selects optimal AI models and tools for specific tasks and use cases, and builds end-to-end pipelines to create cohesive AI solutions.
KEY QUOTES:
“Building practical AI solutions shouldn’t be reserved for big tech companies with extensive AI resources. There are so many AI assets available today—models, datasets, pipelines—but very little infrastructure making these assets readily accessible. aiXplan is changing that. AI has the potential to make a tangible difference for businesses around the world, and our latest financing will help us bring this vision to life.”
- Hassan Sawaf, founder and CEO of aiXplain and former AI Director at Meta, Amazon and eBay
“Hassan and his team deeply understand the global disparity in AI access and the potentially damaging effects of leaving this gap unaddressed. aiXplain has already helped close the AI innovation gap in the MENA region, and we see significant potential for the company to localize its solutions in the Kingdom.”
- Fahad Alidi, Managing Director and CEO at Wa’ed Ventures
