P1 Ventures Raises $50 Million to Back Companies “Built in Africa for the World

P1 Ventures – the early-stage, Pan-African VC – has completed the final close of its first $50 million institutional fund and welcomed African conglomerates, family offices, and partners at global VCs, alongside the World Bank’s IFC. Senior advisors include Index Ventures’ founding team member, Bernard Dalle and Emil Michael, former Uber CBO who scaled it globally. 

With over $60 million now in AUM, P1 Ventures builds on a year of strong momentum in which it completed its largest-ever deal; co-investing as the only African VC alongside Accel into Morocco-based Nuitee’s $48 million Series A round. These achievements underscore P1 Ventures’ contrarian mission and validate its bold ‘Made in Africa’ thesis. They also cement its position as one of Africa’s most prominent VCs, and demonstrate that African innovation is ready to claim its place on the global stage. 

A contrarian thesis

P1 Ventures is a high-conviction investor on a contrarian mission to ensure capital across Africa is as widely distributed as its entrepreneurial talent. With African venture capital dropping for the second consecutive year, and global funding in decline, foreign investors are either retreating from the region or focusing on “safe bets” – tried-and-tested business models in established hubs like Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa. 

P1 Ventures is instead doubling down, seizing the opportunity to partner with the next-generation of resilient and bold African visionaries. Founders who are reshaping the face of the continent now have a sharper focus on execution; they are building more capital-efficient, high-growth, and category-defining businesses.

The African AI/FinTech Advantage

Africa’s potential comes from the unique advantages it has over developed markets. In developed markets, job protectionism, legacy regulations, and infrastructure can all hinder adoption. By contrast, adoption is supercharged in Africa, and other emerging markets, by necessity. 

In fintech, Africa’s mobile-first population has made it a world leader in digital banking, with mobile money leapfrogging traditional card infrastructure. Regulatory advances are also fueling the rise of stablecoins. In AI, automation is addressing Africa’s continent-wide productivity and skills gaps, while offering vast opportunities to make sectors such as hospitality, future of work, and healthcare, more efficient and affordable. Africa’s low-income nations are rapidly replacing subscriptions with pay-per-use models to make tech more accessible, and its mobile-first population is primed to adopt scalable solutions. 

This demand for disruption creates tremendous scope for African founders to import global “Uber-for-X” style business models to local markets. This was a key focus of P1 Ventures’ first proof-of-concept fund, which backed Algerian super app Yassir (now serving 8 million customers across six markets and raising a $150M Series B), and fintech Chari (the first Moroccan company to achieve a $100M valuation, secure a PSP license, and acquire a bank). 

Yet as these innovations take hold and, as the ecosystem matures, so too does the opportunity. And while importing global models, in fintech especially, remains a focus for P1 Ventures, the fund is setting its sights on something even bigger: the global mega-trend of AI. 

Built in Africa for the World

P1 Ventures is expanding its vision to back companies that are boldly “Built in Africa for the World”. Founded by an increasingly strong entrepreneurial talent pool from all corners of the continent, these companies are moving beyond importing models. They’re leveraging the continent’s innovation, with AI’s ability to transcend borders and sectors, to export their solutions on a global scale.

Morocco’s Nuitee is a prime example. The AI-powered hotel booking platform now has 240+ global employees and works with Hilton, Sabre, and Hopper. Its founder Med Benmansour is a Silicon Valley-trained engineer who came back to launch many startups including Binga, an API-first payment company he bootstrapped to profitability.

Egypt’s Gameball, a gamified loyalty and customer engagement platform from Egypt, now serves over 3,000 customers in 70+ countries. Its founder Ahmed Khairy is also a repeat founder with a technical background and over 12 years of experience building products and leading business development for global enterprises. 

South Africa’s Salus, the one-click software deployment solution for enterprise and SMBs, has the potential to become a global player. Its founder Andrew Mori, was formerly CTO at African eCommerce giant Konga and bootstrapped his first company Deimos to USD 20 million annual revenues. 

Egypt’s StakPak is an AI copilot for non-DevOps engineers, built to address the fact that over 99% of Africa’s engineers are non-DevOps, and global AI tools are difficult to import. Its founder, George Fahmy trained as a DevOps engineer in the US and Europe and saw, first-hand, the need for such a product to bridge Africa’s talent gap. 

Supercharged momentum

P1 Ventures’ ability to uncover such hidden tech giants lies in its use of in-house data science tools. It currently boasts a proprietary deal flow database of c. 10,000 Pan-African companies. Its use of AI allows its team to match local expertise to deep market data and spot winners early-on, track trends, and identify talent. This not only supercharges deal flow, but brings huge value-add to portfolio companies as they scale. 

Its portfolio has, to date, created 6,000+ jobs across 20 countries, and impacted the lives of more than 10 million people. What’s more, for every dollar invested, the P1 portfolio raises 35x follow-on capital. This tech-powered approach has also allowed P1 Ventures to identify and expand into key markets like Francophone Africa – a hub that is home to Tunisia’s InstaDeep (one of Africa’s largest exits), Senegal’s Wave (the region’s first unicorn), and P1 Ventures’ own Nuitee. 

Hisham Halbouny, Managing Partner at P1 Ventures said: “From game-changing fintech to pioneering AI applications, we’re uniquely positioned to identify opportunities and support their growth. Great companies are often built in tough times and today’s founders are more frugal, focused, and realistic about valuations. We believe this may be the greatest vintage ever.”

Mika Hajjar, Managing Partner at P1 Ventures said: “We have strong conviction there will be billions of USD of value created by global companies that have been ‘made in Africa’. From Dakar to Nairobi, Cairo to Cape Town, we’re seeing founders combining local insights with global ambition. These entrepreneurs are not just solving Africa’s problems – they’re creating models that the rest of the world can learn from.”

Bernard Dalle, Senior Advisor at P1 Ventures said: “A new generation of visionary African founders is emerging, creating opportunities across the continent and beyond. Africa VC is fast becoming an asset class that globally minded investors cannot afford to ignore.”