Zest Wire | 1-April-2026

This week’s agenda

💰 Capital activity across MENA private markets

🤝 M&A highlights

📈 When Access to VC Becomes a Liability

📖 What we’re reading

🎤 Voices from around the region

Market moves: Capital activity across MENA

• 🇦🇪 Advanced Digital Gaming Technology (ADGT) raises $250 million from Blackstone, Raya Holding, NRT Technology, and Sightline Payments to build next-generation payments and data intelligence infrastructure supporting regulated digital markets across the UAE, MENA, Africa, and global corridors.

• 🇦🇪 CarniStore raises $12.2 million strategic minority investment from Emirates Growth Fund (EGF) to support industrial scaling, new product verticals, and regional expansion of its premium protein and digital butchery platform.

• 🇦🇪 zypl.ai raises $5.5 million bridge round led by Carbide Ventures, with participation from Shukhrat Ibragimov, to power global expansion and deployment of next-generation synthetic data solutions for financial institutions.

• 🇸🇦 GAGA raises $2.5 million pre-Series A round led by Phoenix Venture Partners, with participation from family offices and individual investors, to expand its teacher network, enhance its technology stack, and scale Arabic-language educational content across Saudi Arabia.

M&A highlights

• Yassir, an Algeria-based super app operating across 60+ cities in six countries, has acquired Kawarizmi, a Paris-based programmatic trading desk and adtech company, to build an integrated retail media and advertising ecosystem and expand brand partnerships across Europe, MENA, and Africa. Source.

When Access to VC Becomes a Liability

Venture secondaries have scaled to a $91.7 billion annualized market, nearly doubling in a single year. But PitchBook warns that the infrastructure behind the market - ownership verification, regulatory oversight, standardized policies - has not kept pace with the capital pouring in. SPVs have enabled faster transactions and broader access, but they have also become a preferred vehicle for fraud. The market now faces a defining moment: build institutional-grade guardrails or risk becoming private markets' next cautionary tale.

Read the full breakdown here.