Scale AI alum raises $9M for AI serving critical industries in MENA

Bilal Abu-Ghazaleh A few days before our call he had moved to London, splitting his time between there and Dubai.

After nearly a decade in the US, including work at Scale AI, he’s bringing that experience to his next venture: 1001 AI A company that builds AI infrastructure for critical industries across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

The startup recently raised a $9 million seed round led by CIV, General Catalyst and Lux ​​Capital. Other backers include global and regional angels such as Chris Ray, Amjad Massad (Replit), Amira Sajwani (Damac), Khalid bin Bader Al Saud (RAED Ventures), and Hisham Alfalih (Lean Technologies).

Abu-Ghazaleh said his two-month-old company promises to reduce inefficiencies in high-stakes sectors such as aviation, logistics and oil and gas through AI-native operating systems for decision-making.

“Just looking at the top three or four industries like airports, ports, construction and oil and gas, we’re seeing over $10 billion in inefficiencies across the Gulf alone,” the founder and CEO said in an interview with TechCrunch. “That’s just in markets like the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Even without counting other sectors, these industries represent a huge opportunity.”

For example, any efficiencies found in airport operations can increase savings, affecting both the airport and its airlines. Meanwhile, he said nine out of ten of the region’s mega-projects are behind schedule or over budget, meaning even a small increase in efficiency can save these projects serious money.

1001 AI expects to sell its decision-making AI to new projects after it launches its first product, which is slated for the end of the year. The startup is in talks with some of the biggest construction companies and airports in the Gulf, Abu-Ghazaleh said.

Born and raised in Jordan, Abu-Ghazaleh moved to the US for college and later joined the Bay Area startup scene. After an initial product role at computer vision startup Hive AI, he joined Scale AI in 2020 during a period of rapid expansion. There, he rose from operations associate to director of the company’s GenAI operations, scaling its contributor network responsible for annotating and labeling training data.

He later set out to join Scale’s international public sector unit, which develops AI solutions for foreign governments. But when Meta scale investingThe company changed direction, and Abu-Ghazaleh went to find the 1001 AI.

The Gulf, particularly the UAE and Saudi Arabia, has become one of the world’s most aggressive AI adopters. From sovereign-backed initiatives like the G42 in Abu Dhabi to the National Center for AI in Saudi Arabia, governments are investing billions to build local AI infrastructure and attract global talent.

For Abu-Ghazaleh, the mix of hunger, budget and urgency made the region a perfect testing ground. But unlike most AI startups that focus on software or enterprise tools, 1001 targets real-world physical activity, an area where the company’s investors believe the potential is greater in the Middle East.

“We are very bullish on AI that solves physical-world problems at scale, such as how airports route flights, how ports move cargo, how construction sites operate,” said Dina Shakir, partner at Lux Capital. “The MENA region offers significant potential in this space with mission-critical infrastructure that is less digitized and amenable to transformation.”

While the product is still under development, Abu-Ghazaleh gave a glimpse of how it works. The system collects data from a client’s existing software, models operational workflows and issues real-time instructions to improve performance.

“Today, an operations manager can manually call someone to reroute a fuel truck or send a cleaning crew to another gate,” Abu-Ghazaleh said. “With our system, that orchestration happens automatically. The AI ​​orchestrator uses real-time data to reroute vehicles, reassign crews and adjust operations without human intervention.”

Unlike most early-stage AI startups that target specific industries, Abu-Ghazaleh says 1001 can be accessible to many because operational flows across industries often look similar.

That model borrows from the rigors of consulting and contracting work. The team spends weeks embedded with clients, running co-development sprints to tailor its systems to the realities of each operation, the CEO said.

Neeraj Arora, Managing Director, General Catalyst, commented, “Bilal is building the decision engine to automate that complexity to build the scale-proven execution and regional gravity 1001 platform.

The new funding will accelerate initial deployments across aviation, logistics and infrastructure, while accelerating recruitment in engineering, operations and go-to-market roles as it grows its team across Dubai and London.

1001 plans to launch its first customer deployment by the end of the year, starting with the AI ​​build. Over the next five years, Abu-Ghazaleh wants the organization to become the Gulf orchestration level for these industries before expanding globally.