Muslim Tech Fest 2026 London speaker sweep surfaces two new tracking categories: Education/Learning (Roots Academy, Kestrl, Headstarter-adjacent) and Charity Tech / Community Giving (Charity Right, Scooda). Also added: Haroon Mokhtarzada / Truebill ($1.275B exit to Rocket Companies, 2022), Humna Khan / ASTRO (deep-tech additive manufacturing testing, ex-SpaceX + NASA), Nester (FCA-regulated Shariah property financing), Autocab (Uber acquisition, Safa Alkateb CEO), and 10Pearls (Zeeshan Aftab, $50M+ ARR Pakistani-American engineering firm). Notable Muslim ecosystem: 48 confirmed speakers at MTF 2026 London, including Husayn Kassai (Onfido/Quench.ai), Ibrahim Khan (Cur8 Capital), Chris Blauvelt (LaunchGood), Sujude Dalieh (Replit).
MTF 2026 speakers →Afghan-American Muslim (Mokhtarzada surname; brothers Yahya + Idris are Quranic names), YC-backed, Harvard Law. Founded Truebill in 2015 with brothers — personal finance / subscription management app reaching 10M+ members. Rocket Companies acquired for $1.275B (Jan 2022) — now operating as Rocket Money. Haroon spoke at Muslim Tech Fest 2026 London. Potentially the single largest Muslim-founder exit in North American consumer fintech.
Rocket Money →Pakistani-American Muslim founder. Ex-SpaceX Director of Quality Engineering (Falcon 9/Heavy), ex-NASA Program Manager (Safety + Mission Assurance), ex-USAF. Founded ASTRO in 2020 — the first dedicated test lab for additive manufacturing (3D-printed metals) validation and qualification in aerospace/defense. Youngest Associate Professor at Cal State LA engineering. Now also COO at Mimo Technik. Deep tech Muslim-founder space significantly under-tracked prior to MTF scan.
3DPrint.com profile →Syrian-born Muslim, Oxford Rhodes Scholar. Family lost savings twice (Syrian war, Lebanon collapse). Built nsave to give people from unstable economies (Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan) access to offshore USD/EUR/GBP accounts and investments. First fintech to offer Syrians full financial access. $4M seed (Sequoia + TQ + YC) → $18M Series A. Featured at MTF 2023/2024. One of the strongest Muslim-founder fintech stories in the diaspora rails space.
nsave →Boycat (Adil Abbuthalha, Yemeni-Sri Lankan): self-taught dev, fired for building it, Israel offered $150M to shut it down — 2.5M users, $250M consumer spending redirected to ethical brands. Menza (Mariam Ahmed, Forbes 30U30): YC AI data analyst for consumer brands, $14M raised, Goldman Sachs → King's College CS → YC. Pfida (Raza Ullah): UK Islamic home co-ownership (zero riba, zero debt), years-long waitlist. Also: Brickwise AI (Ismail Jeilani, same Somali-British founder as LiveLink) — YC-backed AI property manager. LiveLink founder corrected to Ismail Jeilani (Somali-British Muslim, serial founder).
Boycat →Roots Academy (Hisham Abu Yusuf, ex-Monzo): structured Islamic education on 65+ UK/US/Australia/Canada campuses, 130K+ students. Charity Right (Asim Lone, 25-yr software dev turned CEO): tech-native food charity — 90% income via custom-built platform, no JustGiving. Scooda (Huzaifah Jeewa, ex-imam turned founder): digital ops platform for Islamic nonprofits. New filters added to dashboard: "Education/Learning" and "Charity Tech" — tracking Muslim founders building in religious education, Islamic EdTech, and charity/community-giving infrastructure.
Roots Academy →Triggered by YC's tweet on Plena (Spring 2026; Eyad Abdalla; AI OS for specialty clinics, 17x in 10 months to seven-figure ARR — existing row enriched). New rows: Asendia AI (Spring 2026; Rihab Lajmi + Badis Zormati, first Tunisian founders in YC; AI voice recruiters), Munify (S25; Khalid Ashmawy, ex-Microsoft/Uber; $3M Egyptian-diaspora neobank), plus an Egyptian-founded security cluster — Raspire (Spring 2026; runtime app protection, 20M+ users), Strix (Ahmed Allam; #1 OSS pentest agent on GitHub; Alif-backed) and NexGuards (GenAI spear-phishing defense).
Plena (YC) →Saudi fintech Arib (founders Omar Al-Hammad, Mohamed Dessouky, Waleed Talat) raised $23.5M led by Merak Capital — including Shariah-compliant Murabaha facilities. Arib's marketplace lets users compare and apply for financing from banks and licensed lenders in one place. Targets KSA, UAE, Qatar and Egypt as it rides Vision 2030 consumer-credit modernization. A clean Saudi Muslim-founder Islamic-fintech add.
Wamda →Stitch (Mohamed Oueida, founded 2022) sells a cloud-native core-banking / payments OS that lets banks and fintechs ship up to 80% faster. $5B+ processed in the last six months; customers up 10x and revenue up 20x in 2025. The $25M Series A matters beyond the company: it's a16z's first-ever investment in the GCC — a signal of global VC appetite for Saudi fintech infrastructure.
Wamda →Pakistani-British brothers Hasan and Omair Sarwar built Peekabox (founded 2025) to let food and grocery businesses sell surplus inventory at 50–70% discounts — cutting waste while widening access. Oversubscribed $1.5M seed from regional operators; scaling across the UAE and into Saudi Arabia next. Clean Muslim-founder add in the ethical-consumption / food-waste space.
Arab News →ARRW (founder Ahmed Taalab; Egyptian, Med confidence) raised $4M from Tasheed Egypt to grow its driver network and platform. Positions itself as Egypt's first licensed ride-hailing service — a regulation-first, locally focused alternative to global incumbents. Also added this week at lower confidence: Tunisia insurtech EYST (216 Capital; one Muslim co-founder, Marwen Amamou).
Arab News →Manara Ventures (Jordan Capital and Investment Fund; ADGM-domiciled, Lunate-backed) launched a $70.5M fully Shariah-compliant scale-up fund for 20+ growth-stage Jordanian tech startups ($750K–$3M cheques) — added to Networks. Stealth-emergence sweep (§5): this week's AI-security raises — CodeIntegrity ($5M; founders Jung/Raghuram) and Gitar ($9M, since acquired by Sonar; Persian-heritage founder, faith unconfirmed) — did not pass the Muslim-founder filter on confirmation, so no security rows were added. This week's confirmed Muslim-founder activity was fintech-concentrated.
Arab News →Ex-Palantir trio (Tilman Flock CEO, Zaki Trache / Mohamed Zaki CPO, Martin Copes) building the AI operating system for drug discovery end-to-end — from target identification through clinical trial design. Zaki Trache (full name Mohamed Zaki T.) suggests North African / Arab Muslim heritage (Low confidence, unconfirmed). Already deployed by CSL (Australian biotech). Funded by Accel + Air Street Capital + Elder Gull. This is the most significant new potential Muslim-founder biotech entry of 2026 so far.
Fortune →UAE-founded global employment + payroll + spend platform (150+ countries) raised Series B led by EBRD Venture Capital with 500 Global and Khwarizmi Ventures. Founders Kamal Reggad (Moroccan heritage, CEO) and Karim Nadi (Arab heritage) — Med confidence Muslim founders. Reached profitability in early 2025 before this growth round. A notable Arab-diaspora fintech at genuine global scale.
Fintech Global →Shahzad Younas (Pakistani-British Muslim, ex-Morgan Stanley VP Equity Trading) left banking to build Muzz. 17M+ registered users in 190+ countries, 800K+ marriages facilitated, £22.1M ARR (Jan 2025). Launched in India April 2026 — formalized presence that had quietly been building. Backed by YC S17 + Cur8 Capital. A significant consumer-tech success story we'd under-scanned from the UK Muslim founder ecosystem.
Muzz →Founded by Nour Al Hassan (Jordanian-Arab, TED Fellow) in 2009; raised $15M Series A (May 2025, Global Ventures-led). Pronoia V2 (proprietary Arabic LLM) outperforms GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3, and Cohere on Arabic tasks. 2B+ words processed, 30+ markets, 22 Arabic dialects. Nour publicly responded to Anthropic CEO's leaked Gulf comments, positioning Tarjama as the Arab-native AI alternative. MENA's leading language-tech play.
Arabic.AI announcement →Alfarouk Saleh (Muslim founder, dropped out of dental school → CS; prior B2B SaaS exit) and Youssef Torky (Cornell Tech). Antler Fall 2024 US portfolio ($250K). AI agentic CRM for healthcare: contacts patients, explains covered benefits, books appointments. Addresses $290B in unused fully-covered healthcare services annually. Featured at Habibi Tech Demo Day — emerging Habibi Tech / Antler intersection to watch.
Antler US →LaunchGood (Chris Blauvelt, Amany Killawi, Omar Hamid; Detroit, YC S16) — world's largest Muslim crowdfunding platform, ~$700M GMV / 2.1M donors / 155 countries. PayGood (Amany Killawi, 2024 spinout) — payments processor for Muslim/values-based merchants. PureFi (Arshan Ahmad — also founder of Friday HQ + Friday Ventures) — interest-free banking + USDC-rail remittance for the US→Pakistan/India/Egypt/Yemen corridor; ~100K waitlist. Arshan is now a fund-and-founder dual-hat operator at the center of the Muslim-fintech graph.
PureFi →Two new Muslim-founder security plays surfaced via stealth-emergence + alumni-lineage scan. Amplify Security — AI agents that fix insecure code; Ali Mesdaq (Persian heritage) brings 26 yrs cybersec + 20 patents from FireEye, Proofpoint, Websense — slots into our growing FireEye-alumni founder vein (Aziz → Jalil → Ahmed → Mesdaq). Stealthium — runtime / execution-environment defense from Ahmed Shosha (Egyptian heritage, ex-Microsoft, prior PlaySentinel), currently in UK Cyber Runway accelerator. Both tagged Security ★; Amplify also tagged AI ★. Net: security bench from 3 → 5 named Muslim-founded plays in one sweep.
Amplify Security →Karachi-born Pakistani-American founder Rehan Jalil's data-AI-security company joins his prior wins: WiChorus → Tellabs ($180M) and Elastica → Blue Coat ($280M; later part of Symantec's $4.7B Blue Coat deal). One of the largest Muslim-founder exits ever. Jalil now President of Security and AI at Veeam.
Business Recorder →Ashar Aziz (FireEye, first Pakistani-American tech billionaire, IPO 2013 + Mandiant/Google $5.4B) → Rehan Jalil (Securiti AI $1.725B exit; Elastica $280M; WiChorus $180M) → Yasir Khalid (StrikeReady $12M, ex-FireEye). Plus Aziz's current SkyElectric (cleantech). Three generations of Pakistani-Muslim cyber founders, deeply connected.
Ashar Aziz →Khalid Hashi's OGOW Health (Somali-Canadian; 700+ Somali clinics; Obama Foundation Scholar). Ruangguru (Indonesia's 22M-user edtech, SoftBank-backed). AnsariChat (Waleed Kadous; OSS Islamic Q&A AI). Mahfil + Muraqaba round out faith-tech beyond Tarteel. Tabby's Hosam Arab now confirmed Saudi-raised → High confidence. MNT-Halan flagged for review — Nakhla surname pattern more often Egyptian Coptic Christian; faith not publicly identified.
OGOW Health →StrikeReady (Yasir Khalid, $12M Series A, ex-FireEye 17-patent veteran, autonomous SOC). Corgea (Ahmad Sadeddin, YC S23, $2.6M Shorooq-led, auto-fix vulnerable code). StrongestLayer (Muhammad "Riz" Rizwan CTO, $5.2M seed, LLM-native email defense). Security was our thinnest vein — these are now three named, well-funded plays.
StrikeReady →Transformer Lab, Manzil, Basetwo AI, Draftaid, Plena Health all Toronto-based. Plus Swish Solar at Waterloo. Canadian Khoja-Ismaili + Arab-Canadian + South-Asian Muslim diaspora is a real frontier-tech cluster we were under-scanning.
Majlis startups →Pakistani Muslim co-founder. $1B+ ARR, ~50,000 enterprises (Nvidia, Adobe, Uber, Shopify). $2.3B raised; SpaceX holds a $60B buyout option for 2026. Biggest Muslim-founded AI exposure in the tracker.
cursor.com →Tabby: $3.3B val, $160M Series E (Feb 2025), 15M users. Tamara: $1B+ val, $2.4B Goldman/Citi/Apollo asset-backed facility (Sep 2025). Both near-IPO.
TechCrunch (Tabby) →Founded by Abdallah Abu-Sheikh. AI-native Islamic digital bank targeting 2B+ Muslims and underbanked communities. BlueFive Capital led.
Zawya release →61.17% vs 44.13% (GPT-4o), 29.8% (Claude 3.5), 33.0% (Gemini Pro 2.5). 400+ healthcare organizations deployed.
YC profile →Alif-backed startup tackling early Alzheimer's detection + prevention as a connected ecosystem rather than a single drug.
Alif portfolio →Applied Intuition (Qasar Younis, Pakistani-American Muslim; ex-YC COO under Sam Altman): $6B+ AV-dev platform, 18/20 top automakers as customers, $250M Series E — possibly the biggest single Muslim-founder deep-tech company in the tracker after Cursor. Pelago Health / Quit Genius (Yusuf Sherwani + Maroof Ahmed + Sarim Siddiqui; all Imperial College London medical school): 11x revenue post-Series B, $100M+ raised, largest digital therapeutics platform for substance-use disorders globally. Cur8-ecosystem. Ayan Capital (Abdullo Kurbanov, Tajik Muslim): UK's only dedicated Shariah-compliant car finance for PCO/PHV drivers — top-3 Islamic Finance UK startup.
Applied Intuition →