Saudi Private Markets Platform OORI Clears CMA Licensing Hurdle

OORI, a Riyadh-based investment platform, has secured a licence from the Saudi Capital Market Authority to conduct arranging and advising activities, giving it a regulated route to sell private market investments to qualified Saudi investors. The authorisation, held under CMA licence number 26341-30, positions the platform to open access to venture, growth and pre-IPO technology deals that have historically sat behind high minimums and limited distribution.

The launch is funded by a seven-figure US dollar pre-seed round OORI closed in 2024, backed by Bunat Ventures and RZM Investments alongside a group of family offices and angel investors from Saudi Arabia, the wider Gulf and Europe. The proceeds covered platform development, the licensing process itself and the operational build-out ahead of commercial launch.

What has OORI actually been licensed to do?

The arranging and advising permissions are two of the five regulated activities the CMA issues to capital market institutions, sitting alongside dealing, managing and custody. In practice, an arranging and advising licence lets OORI introduce qualified clients to investment opportunities and provide advice on them, rather than take custody of assets or run discretionary mandates. The platform says its offering will be Shariah-compliant and aimed at qualified investors, initially concentrated on technology companies across the pre-seed, venture, growth and pre-IPO stages, with a stated intention to broaden into other alternative asset classes over time.

OORI is not building its distribution alone. The platform says it has assembled a network spanning investment banks, venture capital firms, private equity funds and other investment platforms, along with wealth managers, family offices and independent financial advisers, to source and channel deal flow to its client base.

Why does a regulated private markets platform matter now?

Private markets have long been constrained by three structural barriers: limited deal availability, high minimum cheque sizes and illiquid holding structures that lock capital up for years. OORI's pitch is that a regulated, technology-led platform can narrow those gaps for a class of investor with appetite for private assets but without the ticket size or access that institutions enjoy.

The timing tracks a broader shift in the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia has remained the largest venture capital market in the Middle East and North Africa for three consecutive years, and foreign participation in its private markets has climbed sharply. According to the Saudi Venture Capital Company, international investors committed roughly SAR 20 billion, about 5.3 billion US dollars, to Saudi private markets in 2025, close to 60 per cent of all private investment into the Kingdom that year. The number of foreign investors active in those markets rose more than fivefold, from 28 in 2019 to 148 in 2025, with cumulative foreign commitments passing 11 billion US dollars since tracking began. Domestic activity has kept pace: SVC reported that Saudi startups raised 860 million US dollars across 114 deals in the first half of 2025, up 116 per cent year on year.

That growth is the backdrop against which OORI is opening its doors. A deepening pool of private capital and a maturing regulatory framework under the Kingdom's Vision 2030 reforms have expanded both the supply of deals and investor confidence in accessing them, conditions that favour a licensed intermediary building distribution infrastructure into that flow.

What is the digital asset angle, and how firm is it?

Beyond the immediate licensing news, OORI has signalled longer-term ambitions in digital infrastructure. The company describes a roadmap that includes tokenisation, smart contracts and digital investment rails built on its own Layer 1 chain on Avalanche. These are forward-looking objectives rather than live products, and the current CMA authorisation covers arranging and advising activities, not the issuance or custody of tokenised instruments. Any move into on-chain settlement or tokenised private assets would sit against a Saudi regulatory backdrop that is still developing its approach to digital securities, and would likely require permissions beyond those OORI holds today.

Why this matters to FinanceX readers

OORI is a small, early-stage entrant, and its seven-figure pre-seed round is modest against the scale of the market it is targeting. But the direction of travel it represents is worth watching. As private capital deepens in the Gulf, the competitive edge is shifting towards regulated access and distribution rather than deal origination alone. Platforms that can legally intermediate between a growing base of qualified investors and a pipeline of private technology deals stand to capture a slice of one of the region's fastest-growing asset classes.

For investors and allocators tracking the Kingdom, OORI is an early test of whether technology-enabled platforms can widen private market access in a market that institutions have, until now, largely defined on their own terms.