Inside COFE Tech’s $178M Bet on AI — and Why Its CEO Calls Riyadh the Middle East’s Silicon Valley | LEAP 2026

COFE Tech Founder and CEO Ali Al-Ebrahim arrived at LEAP 2026 with plenty to talk about. Following the announcement of a funding round valued at approximately US$178 million, the company is entering a new phase of growth — one that goes far beyond its original identity and increasingly places AI, enterprise technology and B2B infrastructure at the center of its strategy.

Speaking to Entrepreneur Middle East in Riyadh, Al-Ebrahim outlined how COFE Tech is evolving its platform and using data more aggressively to solve operational challenges for businesses. The ambition, he explained, is not simply to build technology around coffee or hospitality, but to create systems that can help companies make smarter decisions across procurement, supply chains, commercial operations and customer engagement.

That shift reflects a broader transformation taking place across the region. Businesses are no longer asking whether they should experiment with AI. The more pressing question is how they can use it in ways that actually improve margins, reduce inefficiencies and create better visibility across their operations.

For COFE Tech, that increasingly means building AI-driven enterprise solutions that can help businesses understand what they are buying, how their supply chains are performing and where commercial opportunities may be hiding inside the data they already generate.

Procurement is one area Al-Ebrahim sees as particularly significant. For many businesses, procurement remains a fragmented process involving multiple suppliers, disconnected systems and limited real-time visibility. Technology can change that by giving companies a clearer understanding of their purchasing patterns, supplier relationships and costs — while AI can help identify where efficiencies can be created.

The same applies to commercial decision-making. As businesses grow, the volume of data they generate increases quickly, but that does not automatically mean the information becomes useful. The opportunity, Al-Ebrahim suggests, lies in converting that data into something actionable: a better understanding of customers, more efficient operations and faster decisions.

This is becoming particularly important as B2B demand across hospitality and beverage continues to expand. Saudi Arabia’s wider growth story, driven by major developments, tourism, hospitality investment and mega-projects, is creating new opportunities for companies that can provide the technology and infrastructure required to support businesses at scale.

Al-Ebrahim believes those trends are only beginning to accelerate.

Enterprise AI, in particular, is becoming one of the defining themes of the next stage of the region’s technology ecosystem. While much of the early conversation around AI focused on consumer tools and experimentation, businesses are increasingly looking for solutions that can be embedded directly into their operations and linked to measurable outcomes.

That represents an important shift. The value of AI for an enterprise is not necessarily in having the most sophisticated technology, but in using it to solve a problem that already exists — whether that means reducing costs, managing procurement more efficiently, improving the customer experience or giving leadership greater visibility over the business.

For COFE Tech, the timing of that transition is closely connected to Saudi Arabia’s own evolution as a technology and business hub.

Al-Ebrahim describes Riyadh as the “Silicon Valley of the Middle East,” a comparison that speaks to the scale of capital, talent, ambition and entrepreneurial activity now converging in the city.

Saudi Arabia has become one of the region’s most closely watched markets for startups and technology companies, driven by large-scale investment, ambitious digital transformation programs and a rapidly developing ecosystem of founders, investors and global companies.

But for Al-Ebrahim, Riyadh is not simply a market in which companies can sell. It is increasingly becoming a launchpad.

For startups looking to expand into Saudi Arabia, the city provides access to one of the region’s largest opportunities for growth while also placing companies closer to the businesses, investors and decision-makers shaping the Kingdom’s next economic chapter.

That matters because scaling in Saudi Arabia can require more than simply replicating a model that has worked elsewhere. Companies need to understand the market, build local relationships and adapt their products to the operational realities of businesses on the ground.

Those that do so successfully can find themselves operating in an ecosystem where the pace of development is unusually fast.

LEAP itself has become symbolic of that momentum. Each year, the event brings together technology leaders, investors, founders and government stakeholders from around the world, turning Riyadh into a meeting point for discussions around AI, cloud infrastructure, entrepreneurship and emerging technologies.

For companies such as COFE Tech, that environment reflects the larger opportunity taking shape in Saudi Arabia: a market where the conversation is increasingly moving from adoption to execution.

The company’s funding round gives it additional resources to pursue that opportunity, but Al-Ebrahim’s comments suggest the next stage will be defined less by capital alone and more by how effectively the business can use technology to solve real enterprise problems.

That distinction is important.

Funding can accelerate growth, but it does not replace product-market fit, operational discipline or a clear understanding of where technology can deliver measurable value. As AI becomes easier to deploy and increasingly common across enterprise platforms, companies will have to differentiate themselves through the problems they solve rather than the technology labels they use.

For Al-Ebrahim, the opportunity is already visible across Saudi Arabia.

The combination of enterprise AI, rising B2B demand, hospitality expansion and the extraordinary scale of projects underway across the Kingdom is creating an environment where technology companies can build solutions for businesses that themselves are growing at speed.

And if Riyadh continues on its current trajectory, his description of the city as the Middle East’s Silicon Valley may become less of a bold comparison and more of a reflection of where the region’s technology ecosystem is heading.