Grace Ashiru
Sovereign AI company 1001, with operations across the GCC and London, has secured $30 million in a Series A funding round led by Lux Capital. The investment also attracted participation from PIF owned Sanabil Investments, 9Yards, and Hanabi, while existing investors General Catalyst, CIV, and Stanford AI researcher Chris Ré increased their commitments. The round further received backing from several regional and international angel investors, including Karim Atiyeh, Co founder and CTO of Ramp, Kareem Amin, Co founder and CEO of Clay, Russell Kaplan, President of Cognition, alongside Shayan Shafii, Daniel Garber, and Junaid Hussain.
The funding reflects growing confidence that the Middle East has evolved beyond being a consumer of foreign technology into a region where applied AI is developed and validated through real world deployment. It also underscores the belief that, over the next decade, true technological sovereignty will depend on a country’s ability to build, operate, and govern its own AI across critical sectors rather than relying on solutions developed abroad.
Bilal Abu-Ghazaleh, founder and CEO of 1001, said the GCC oversees some of the world’s most critical infrastructure, accounting for a substantial share of global oil flows, container traffic, and international aviation. He noted that businesses across the region are looking beyond pilot projects, seeking sovereign AI systems capable of delivering measurable outcomes and supporting thousands of trusted real time decisions. Abu-Ghazaleh added that the funding will allow the company to deepen its mission while attracting top local and international talent.
Founded in 2025 by Abu-Ghazaleh, 1001 develops sovereign AI systems that integrate with operators’ existing infrastructure to create a real time operational model of assets, processes, dependencies, and constraints. Rather than simply monitoring operations, the platform anticipates potential issues, recommends or carries out the most effective response, and enables faster, more intelligent decision making at scale. Built, owned, and governed locally, the systems ensure clients maintain complete control over the critical infrastructure they cannot afford to lose access to.
1001’s AI systems are designed for high value operational environments where smarter data and intelligence can strengthen decision making across critical infrastructure sectors, including aviation, ports and logistics, energy, manufacturing, and industrial operations. According to McKinsey, wider AI adoption has the potential to contribute as much as $150 billion to GCC economies, representing about 9% of the region’s combined GDP, with critical infrastructure standing out as one of the most valuable areas for impact.
Deena Shakir, Partner at Lux Capital, described Bilal and the 1001 team as mission driven founders with world class technical expertise, building in one of the world’s most significant environments. She said the company is demonstrating that frontier AI for critical infrastructure can be developed, owned, and governed locally instead of relying on imported solutions. Shakir added that Lux Capital is proud to lead the funding round and support 1001 as it strengthens the GCC’s ability to build AI while advancing the capability to operate its most critical systems.
A spokesperson for Sanabil Investments said GCC economies are making unprecedented investments in data, computing power, and infrastructure, with increasing emphasis on developing local capabilities to manage these assets through trusted AI. The spokesperson added that the firm sees 1001 as being well positioned to become a leading sovereign AI partner for institutions operating across critical infrastructure sectors.
The newly secured funding will accelerate the expansion of 1001’s workforce, with a strong emphasis on growing its engineering team while strengthening its commercial capabilities and go to market strategy across key GCC markets. The company already attracts top technical talent from globally recognised institutions, including Yale, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon.
1001 has previously been backed by prominent angel investors including Amjad Masad (Replit), Amira Sajwani (DAMAC), Khalid Bin Bader Al Saud (RAED Ventures), and Hisham Al-Falih (Lean Technologies).
