Abu Dhabi-based Shorooq and Presight have invested in Maven Robotics, joining the Silicon Valley startup’s $100 million Series A round as it prepares to put more of its industrial robots to work in warehouses.
The investment was made through the Presight–Shorooq AI and Bedaya funds managed by Shorooq. RoboStrategy, LocalGlobe, Vine Ventures and XTX Ventures also participated in the round. The amount invested by the Abu Dhabi partners was not disclosed.
Maven, founded in 2024 and based in Santa Clara, builds robots for logistics and manufacturing. Its first focus is mixed-case palletising and tote handling: jobs that involve picking up, moving and stacking goods of different shapes and sizes. The company says its robots already operate for up to 16 hours a day at customer sites, with reliability above 99%.
The startup plans to build 250 of its third-generation machines and begin designing a fourth-generation model. It also intends to move beyond palletising into a wider range of materials-handling work.
“We’re not in the race to build the biggest model — we’re in the race to solve industrial labour,” said Maven CEO and co-founder Hamza Derbas. He said the backing would give Maven access to compute, data and enterprise relationships, and described the Gulf as a potential base from which to take its robots to more markets.
For Shorooq, the investment puts its AI strategy into a business where performance can be measured on a warehouse floor. “Hamza and his team are not chasing a research benchmark — they are solving one industrial problem at a time,” said Bilal Baloch, a partner at the firm.
Presight CEO Thomas Pramotedham said the appeal was Maven’s focus on moving and handling goods, where customers would judge the technology by its operational results. Presight is listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange and is majority-owned by G42.
The investment comes through a partnership Shorooq and Presight set up in September 2025, when they launched Presight–Shorooq Fund I with a target of investing $100 million in AI companies globally. That is the size of the fund, separate from Maven’s $100 million financing round. The partners have said the fund can offer startups access to AI expertise and commercial networks as well as capital.
In March, Presight announced the first six companies selected for investment through its AI ecosystem. Among them was a company developing systems designed to help machines understand and interact with the physical world, with potential applications in manufacturing and robotics.
