Dubai, UAE: Ayan, a Dubai based artificial intelligence startup, has raised Dh2.2 million in preseed funding from strategic global business angels, the company has announced. The startup says it will use the backing to expand beyond the Middle East and North Africa, where it already describes itself as a leader in front office intelligence for AI led buying.
The raise lands at a moment when shoppers increasingly meet a brand through an AI assistant before they ever visit a store or a website. Ayan says customers now meet a brand twice, first in AI, which answers their questions in words the brand never wrote, and then in store, where the advisor in front of them was briefed on last year’s brand book.
“There is a version of your brand you have never read. It is the only one your customers meet,” said Pablo Charron, Ayan’s founder and Chief Executive Officer. “And it is already deciding who gets recommended, without you in the room. Ayan reads that version, acts on it wherever the customer decides, and measures what moved.”
For brands, the shift changes where the sale is won. If an assistant describes a product wrongly, or recommends a rival instead, the brand may never know it happened. Ayan says its pitch to retailers and consumer brands is simple: hear that first conversation again, then act on it across every channel where the buying decision is made.
How the Platform Works
Ayan works as a loop, the company says. Its agentic platform has analysed millions of data points on how AI describes brands, measured against each brand’s own positioning. It then acts across every channel where the sale happens, from product pages and campaigns before they go live to every sales advisor’s phone, and measures what each action changed in AI answers. What customers ask at the counter flows back in and becomes the next thing Ayan fixes.
The company argues that tools which track AI visibility stop at the screen, and clienteling tools do not know what AI said. Ayan says it follows the customer from the answer to the counter, and already serves more than 50 brands across MENA, Europe and North America. The company shares more about its platform at ayanlabs.ai, and posts company updates on LinkedIn.
Founders Strengthen Board and Advisory Bench
Charron founded Ayan with Chakir El Messaoudi, its Chief Growth Officer. “The advisor used to be the first expert a customer met. Now they are the second,” El Messaoudi said. “Our job is to make sure they are the better informed one.”
The company has also appointed Vincent Carvalho, Chief Growth Officer of the M&A Group at IFS, as a founding board member, and Christian Pedersen, Group Chief Executive Officer at Cegid, as an adviser.
“Brands everywhere are losing the first conversation with their customers to AI, and most cannot even hear it,” Carvalho said. “That is the biggest blind spot in front office software, and one of its biggest opportunities in a decade. Ayan is built to close it, starting in MENA and scaling globally.”
Pedersen added: “Front office systems were built for a customer who talks to the brand first. That customer now talks to AI first. Ayan shows brands, independently, what AI tells their customers, and lets every team act on it.”
Regional AI Funding Momentum
The announcement comes as AI funding across the region accelerates. AI and AI enabled companies in MENA raised 678 million dollars in the first half of 2026, up 81 percent from a year earlier, according to data platform MAGNiTT.
The UAE accounted for 93% of that total. Investors say the region’s AI deal flow is increasingly concentrated in the Emirates, where government adoption and a deep pool of consumer brands give young AI companies early customers close to home.
In April, the UAE Cabinet approved a plan to run half of government services on agentic AI within two years, under the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031. Ayan says that shift is exactly the behaviour its platform is built for, as the first conversation between brands and customers moves from shop floors and search boxes to AI assistants.
Media Contact
- Sudhashree Dash
- Middle East Media Corp
- sudha@memc.co
Disclaimer: All information in this article was shared by Ayan. UAE Startup Story has not verified or confirmed its accuracy and accepts no responsibility for it.
