UAE Agritech Aydi Raises US$7.5 Million To Launch AI Assistant For Farmers
In an interview with Inc. Arabia, Aydi CEO Hassan Fayed described the company's innovation as “the intelligence layer agriculture has been missing."
UAE-based agritech startup Aydi has raised US$7.5 million in seed funding to launch Orth, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant built to help farmers make sharper decisions and improve yields as climate volatility and rising costs reshape global agriculture.
The round brought in backing from COTU Ventures, a Dubai-based seed-stage venture capital firm; Daltex, an Egypt-based agribusiness and produce exporter; and Nuwa Capital, a Dubai-based venture capital firm with offices in Riyadh and Cairo, alongside Magrabi Agriculture, a Cairo-based agricultural investment company, and Foundation Ventures, a Cairo-based venture capital firm.
Founded by Hassan Fayed in the UAE in 2022, Aydi describes itself as a field operating system for agriculture—blending satellite monitoring, predictive analytics, and conversational AI into a single intelligence layer. The firm also has offices in Spain and Egypt.
Its AI-powered assistant, Orth, which was unveiled at this year's Fruit Attraction (an international trade fair for the fruit and vegetable sector held at the Institución Ferial de Madrid in Spain), pulls from satellite signals, weather data, and millions of field-level data points to provide instant, plot-specific guidance to farmers. With it, farmers can detect problems earlier, get tailored recommendations, and boost efficiency by more than 20 percent—all without installing hardware or navigating clunky dashboards.
In an interview with Inc. Arabia, CEO Fayed described Orth as “the intelligence layer agriculture has been missing. It takes what your field is already telling you: weather shifts, soil condition, crop stage, satellite signals, and turns it into clear, context-aware recommendations you can act on today. Not theory, not dashboards you’ll never open, daily guidance that respects how farms actually run.”
That focus on clarity and immediacy is also how Aydi intends to win the trust of growers who have long relied on tradition over technology. “We start simple, deliver value fast, and stay out of the way: no hardware required, minutes to onboard, and advice that gets more precise the more you use it," Fayed explained. "We’ve designed Orth to feel like a quiet expert in your pocket, transparent about ‘why’ and tailored to each plot, so you keep your judgment, while uncertainty goes down."
The Aydi team from feft to right: Bosco Olalquiaga, COO; Edward Layoun, CPO; Hassan Fayed, founder and CEO; and Ahmed Safar, CTO. Image courtest Aydi.
For Fayed, Orth is only the starting point of a much larger play. “Over time, Orth will plug into a broader ‘field intelligence’ ecosystem, operations, compliance, analytics, but it will keep its core promise: timely, personalized agronomic guidance that’s quietly embedded in the work," he explained. "In other words, one house, many rooms; one voice, many use cases. The ecosystem expands; Orth stays focused on making decisions clearer, faster, and more confident.”
From his vantage point, Fayed sees farming being reshaped by a new emphasis on getting timing right. “Climate volatility and rising input costs are forcing decisions by the hour, not by the month," he said. "Tools that predict when to act, irrigate, spray, harvest, will define margins." Fayed also pointed to the need to shift from passive data collection to actionable insights. “Farms are swimming in weather, imagery, and records, but value comes when that data talks back as plain recommendations tied to your field’s context,” he said.
Technology, Fayed noted, is also changing how farmers access expertise that was once out of reach. “Less than 10 percent of growers can reach an expert agronomist on demand; AI collapses that gap, putting consistent, field-aware guidance in every worker’s hand. The net effect: fewer wasted passes, fewer surprises, and more consistent quality.”
For founders eyeing the agritech space, Fayed offers one clear message: get your hands dirty. “Build in the field, not in the lab," he declared. "Earn trust with time-to-value measured in days, not quarters. Don’t oversell AI, make it useful, quiet, and transparent. Design for low-friction adoption (no hardware, no heavy change-management), and integrate with what already works on the farm. Finally, respect the operator’s judgment: the best tools don’t replace decisions; they remove doubt.”
Pictured in the lead image is Aydi founder and CEO Hassan Fayed. Image courtesy Aydi.
