YC alum Cercli, an AI-powered Rippling for MENA, raises oversubscribed $12M Series A

In a region defined by fragmented enterprise systems, outdated compliance tools and HR software that rarely speaks to finance, their circle Creating a unified alternative for MENA businesses with AI at its core.

Dubai-based startup, founded by former Karim operators Thank you Azmi And David RecheEuropean VC announced an oversubscribed $12 million Series A round led by Picus Capital.

Cercli looks little different from the company today That raised a $4 million seed round Last year it rebuilt a Ripple-like stack for the MENA region, but made it AI-native from the ground up.

Over the past year, that bet has paid off. The company says it has grown revenue more than 10 times and now processes more than $100 million in payroll annually for multiple businesses in 50 countries.

But in a crowded HR-tech market—where dozens of startups like Deal and Remote, alongside incumbents like SAP and Oracle, already promise everything from cross-border payments to payroll—why does the market need another HR tech player? CEO Azmi hopes its AI-first reinvention can be the edge that sets it apart.

Azmi started Serkli to help enterprises with basic people operations, a problem he and Reche noticed at their previous employers, Karim and Kitopi, two well-known unicorns in MENA.

With payroll spread across multiple systems and compliance varying by region, the first version of Cercli focuses on a platform that integrates human resource management, payroll and compliance for MENA-based companies operating globally.

But Azmi said it envisioned a bigger opportunity if it baked into AI. So, in the past three months, Azmi says the company has rewritten its entire payroll engine to be multi-country and agent-compatible, enabling it to scale more efficiently across jurisdictions worldwide.

“The legacy systems of the last 20 years—your SAPs, Oracle, Workdays—were built for on-prem and cloud. Now we’re entering an AI-native world,” Azmi said in an interview with TechCrunch. “We didn’t just want to integrate AI; we wanted to rethink the whole stack for how humans and agents work together.”

It has done the same in its recruitment module. Circly now offers agent-driven features that can run background logic on candidate lists, sources from internal datasets, and hiring.

Its own internal operations run on AI, as the company uses custom-built treasury and reconciliation agents to manage its own finances and accounting. That’s how the 14-person team closed its Series A, maintaining a 21% month-on-month revenue growth rate, according to Azmi.

Beyond AI, the founder believes Circle’s other strength lies in integration. While there are plenty of multi-module HR competitors — including Deal, Rippling, BambooHR — MENA companies often stitch together their back office from point solutions. A company can use different products for expense management, payroll or recruiting.

“Customers are asking for everything in one place, and being AI-native allows us to create that unified experience much faster,” Azmi explained.

Azmi said Circle’s AI-native architecture allows it to quickly onboard customers. Setup can happen in two to three days, compared to several months typical with legacy systems, he claims. It has helped the two-year-old HR-tech startup win clients from startups to multinationals, including Vision Bank, Global Climate Finance Center, Haspi, Lean Technologies and Gina.

Circle is the first MENA investment for Picus Capital. The firm has supported other global HR companies such as Personio, Multiplier, Deal, Maki and JTHR.

Other investors participating in this Series A round include Knollwood Investment Advisory as well as existing investors Y Combinator, Afore Capital and COTU Ventures.

As part of the investment, the company plans to develop new AI-native products and is working to gain greater market share in the $5.8 billion HR software opportunity in MENA.

“We’ve seen this business model succeed globally within our portfolio, and we’re excited to support Circle as it grows market share through new customers and product launches,” said Robin Godenrath, Founding Partner at Picus Capital.