The U.S.-Saudi Business Council (the Council) and Radiate Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture capital company that invests in disruptive technologies across stages, hosted a delegation of 15 Silicon Valley entrepreneurs for a special showcase on May 21 in Riyadh. The event attracted an audience of over 110 representatives of Saudi companies including Council members, PIF portfolio companies, and family businesses, and generated 80 requests for individual meetings.
The startups, represented by founders and/or C-suite executives, are active in sectors of priority for the implementation of the Saudi Vision 2030 such as semiconductors manufacturing, energy transition, construction tech, water infrastructure, mining tech, neurotech, medical robotics, and enterprise AI. Their main interest is to identify JV partners to introduce their technologies to the Kingdom in addition to raising funds to grow and scale their businesses.
Most were new to Saudi Arabia and were impressed by the quality of conversations and connections. They gained an understanding of the potential of the Saudi market for their innovations and determined that Saudi Arabia deserves more of their focus. The delegation included:
- AI: Geminus, Instabase
- Construction: Gropyus
- Chemicals: Solugen
- Clean energy: Rainmaker, Arbor Energy
- Health: Neurable, Pison, Superpower
- Water: Aquaria
- Mining: Caur, Earth AI
- Security: Spot AI
- Semiconductor: Zinite, Groq
The agenda consisted of panel discussions on modular housing construction, chemicals, AI applications in mining, wearables, and industrial, personalized health, operational intelligence in the enterprise, and advances in chip design and fabrication that are enabling faster, more scalable AI.
H.E. Dr. Nabeel Koshak, CEO and Board Member of the Saudi Venture Capital, an investment firm and subsidiary of the SME Bank, offered remarks on the development of the Saudi entrepreneurial ecosystem and its readiness to welcome international entrepreneurs to introduce relevant technologies and solutions on the market. Saudi Arabia was recently recognized StartupBlink’s first-ever Country of the Year in terms of startup ecosystem growth. StartupBlink is an annual report that measures the activity of startup ecosystems in 1,473 cities and 118 countries. More information is available at startupblink.com/startupecosystemreport.
The startups are backed by entities such as Andreesen Horowitz, JP Morgan, Greycroft, Schlumberger, NEA, Plug & Play, Radiate Ventures, and YCombinator. Details on each delegate are available at Radiate-Ventures-SV-Saudi-Deeptech-Showcase-2025.pdf.
