Kuwait-founded enterprise technology company COFE Tech, formerly known as COFE App, has closed a pre-IPO funding round at a $178 million valuation, as the company accelerates its transformation from a consumer coffee marketplace into an AI-powered enterprise technology platform.
The investment was co-led by Wa’ed Ventures, Aditum Investment Management, Masarrah Investment Company and Alyasra Foods. The company did not disclose the size of the investment.
Founded in Kuwait in 2018 by Ali Al-Ebrahim, COFE initially built its business around connecting consumers with coffee and beverage merchants. It has since evolved into a broader enterprise technology company, developing infrastructure that helps businesses manage procurement, commerce, inventory and other operational workflows.
The latest financing comes with an ambitious long-term objective: preparing COFE Tech for a targeted IPO on the Saudi Exchange by 2029, aligning the company’s expansion strategy with Saudi Arabia’s broader ambitions under Vision 2030.
From Coffee Marketplace To Enterprise Technology
COFE’s evolution reflects a broader shift taking place across Gulf technology markets. While the company began as a consumer-facing marketplace, its experience operating across the region exposed a much larger problem inside businesses: procurement, sales, inventory and finance often operate through disconnected systems.
COFE Tech is now attempting to solve that fragmentation through a unified enterprise platform. Its technology combines Agentic Procurement and Agentic Commerce, alongside the consumer marketplace that originally established the company.
“Too many companies in our region still run procurement, sales and inventory on systems that do not talk to one another, and that gap costs them efficiency at every step,” said Al-Ebrahim, Founder and CEO of COFE Tech.
The company’s approach is to use AI agents to monitor business activity, anticipate requirements and execute workflows, potentially allowing enterprises to move from software that simply records operations toward systems that actively participate in running them.
Building The “Salesforce Of MENA”
COFE Tech has increasingly positioned itself as a horizontal enterprise technology platform serving businesses across the Gulf. The company today says it serves more than 1,000 clients across 3,000 outlets in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE.
Its customer base spans coffee shops and restaurants as well as hotels, hospitals, educational institutions, aviation companies and large corporations. Customers named by the company include Emirates, Etihad Airways, Kuwait Airways, Al-Futtaim Group, Kuwait Finance House, the Central Bank of Kuwait, stc, Aramco and Alibaba Cloud.
That breadth is significant because it demonstrates how the platform has moved beyond its original consumer-commerce roots. Rather than building technology for a single vertical, COFE is attempting to become an underlying operating layer for businesses with complex procurement and commercial requirements.
AI Moves From Feature To Infrastructure
The company’s latest evolution is centered on what it calls agentic AI enterprises. Rather than treating AI as an additional feature within conventional enterprise software, COFE Tech wants intelligent agents to become an active layer within day-to-day business operations.
“COFE Tech brings those operations into a single intelligent platform, where agents watch the business, anticipate what it needs and act on its behalf, before a shelf runs empty or a customer is kept waiting,” Al-Ebrahim said.
The company’s CTO, Shahood Siddiqui, described the architecture as “one core with two engines,” allowing enterprises to begin with an individual workflow and expand across their operations without having to replace the underlying platform.
The strategy could become increasingly relevant as Gulf enterprises accelerate their adoption of AI while simultaneously seeking greater efficiency from existing operations.
Four Investors Back The Next Chapter
The pre-IPO round brings together investors with significant exposure to the region’s technology and business ecosystem.
Wa’ed Ventures, the venture investment arm of Aramco, previously led COFE’s $15 million Series B in 2023. Aditum Investment Management, Masarrah Investment Company and Alyasra Foods are joining the latest financing as the company prepares for its next phase of expansion.
Anas Algahtani, CEO of Wa’ed Ventures, said COFE had demonstrated “an impressive ability to evolve from a consumer marketplace into an enterprise technology platform,” adding that growing adoption across Gulf enterprises validates both the technology and the opportunity.
For COFE, the continued backing also provides a bridge between its startup origins and its ambitions to become a larger, institutionally ready technology company.
Saudi Arabia At The Center Of The Expansion
Although COFE was founded in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia has become increasingly important to the company’s growth strategy. The Kingdom represents both a major enterprise market and one of the region’s most ambitious environments for technology adoption and digital transformation.
Al-Ebrahim argues that the innovation ecosystems of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have collectively helped COFE move rapidly across the Gulf.
The company now intends to deepen its regional presence while continuing to develop its enterprise platform, with the latest funding supporting expansion across MENA and preparations for a potential Saudi listing.
Building Toward 2029
The proposed IPO target gives COFE Tech a defined long-term milestone. Reaching the Saudi Exchange by 2029 would mark a significant transformation for a company that began in Kuwait as a coffee marketplace just eight years earlier.
The challenge now is execution: expanding enterprise adoption, demonstrating the commercial value of its AI infrastructure and building the governance and financial maturity expected of a public-market company.
For COFE Tech, the ambition is no longer simply to connect consumers with coffee.
It is to build the intelligent infrastructure through which Gulf businesses buy, sell and operate.
