AI Startups Draw Cross-Border Funding, From London Hiring Agents to Riyadh Procurement

In Saudi Arabia, Riyadh-based BRKZ raised $31 million in new equity and debt to expand its construction procurement platform, Ventureburn reported. The company secured $13 million in Series B equity co-led by Wa'ed Ventures and 500 Global, with BECO Capital and Anb Seed Fund also participating, plus $18 million in growth debt from Stride Ventures as part of a previously announced $30 million venture debt facility. The financing brings BRKZ's total funding above $70 million. The platform connects contractors, distributors and factories with building material suppliers and uses an AI pricing engine trained on roughly 40,000 requests for quotations. According to Ventureburn, between 84% and 89% of the engine's predictions fall within 5% of final transaction prices.

Lithuanian legaltech EnforceShield secured €1.7 million in seed funding to expand its platform for automating intellectual property enforcement, Tech.eu reported. The round was led by Vendep Capital with participation from FIRSTPICK VC. Founded in 2024 by attorney Rytis Rudzinskas, the SaaS platform uses AI agents and built-in legal logic to identify and address online IP infringements, including counterfeit products, fake listings and phishing pages. The company applies what it calls a "human-at-the-end" model, with lawyers and analysts reviewing outcomes and handling more complex cases.

In the largest of the rounds, Positron AI raised $875 million in Series C financing at a $5 billion valuation, Ventureburn reported. The funding came through two tranches: a $375 million Series C followed by a Series C-1 of up to $500 million. NEA, Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners co-led the main round, with Andra Capital and SemiAnalysis Capital also participating as co-leads, while Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape, led the second tranche. Positron develops hardware designed to make AI inference cheaper and more energy efficient, with systems built around memory capacity and bandwidth rather than raw compute, using commodity LPDDR5X memory to reduce reliance on constrained high-bandwidth memory supply chains. Forest Baskett of NEA and Gavin Baker of Atreides Management will join the board, alongside Thomas Jermoluk and Dylan Patel.

Twiga Foods, one of Kenya's most heavily funded startups, has entered administration following years of financial pressure and restructuring efforts.