MR
Investor  ·  Infinity Ventures  ·  Dubai

Manal Rifki

I back founders building category-defining companies across MENA and the Gulf — with the conviction, capital, and network to compound from there.

Fund
Infinity Ventures
Based
Dubai, UAE
Stage
Pre-seed → Series A
LinkedIn
/in/manal-rifki
Manal Rifki, Investor at Infinity Ventures M·R · Dubai · MMXXVI
i.

A view of the next decade, not the next quarter.

Thesis

The most consequential companies of the next ten years won't be built where the last ten were. The Gulf is putting capital, talent, and policy behind a generational shift — and founders here are no longer building for export; they're building for a market the world will compete to enter.

I back operators with conviction in that thesis: AI infrastructure with regional defensibility, fintech rails for a sukuk-fluent generation, and proptech rebuilding the Gulf's most expensive asset class. I move fast on people I trust and ask hard questions early.

ii.

What I'm actively backing.

01 AI & AI Infrastructure Foundation models with regional moat. Tooling for Arabic-first products. Vertical AI for finance, real estate, and logistics.
02 Fintech B2B rails, cross-border payments, embedded finance — with a particular interest in the MENA-Gulf-Africa corridor.
03 Sukuk & Islamic Finance Modern infrastructure for Sharia-compliant capital markets. Tokenization, retail access, and the institutional layer.
04 Proptech Liquidity, transparency, and software in a market that has moved further than the tools serving it.
05 Deeptech Hard problems with regional pull — energy, climate, materials, and frontier compute.
06 Morocco–Gulf flow Founders building between two of the most underestimated ecosystems in the world. I see this corridor early.
Where I look
UAE · KSA · Egypt · Morocco
and founders building toward those markets from anywhere
iii.

Reach out.

I read everything. I respond to what's specific, well-framed, and aligned with what I'm working on. The form below routes directly to my desk and is reviewed weekly.

If you're raising, lead with the why. If you're connecting, tell me what you're working on. If you're pitching the firm, send the deck.

  • Founders raising pre-seed → Series A
  • Co-investors with overlap on thesis
  • Operators in Gulf, MENA, Morocco
  • Anyone building Sukuk infrastructure
Your submission is delivered to Manal directly. No newsletters, no list-building, no third-party tracking.