Saudi Arabia-Based Hakeem Health Nets US$1.65 Million Funding Round Led By Merak Capital

KSA-based healthtech startup Hakeem Health has pocketed US$1.65 million in a funding round led by Saudi Arabia-based investment firm Merak Capital, with participation from the KSA-based early-stage investment platform, Sanabil 500. 

Founded by Bilal Adi and Mohammed Ayyad in the UAE in 2022, Hakeem Health has developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered medical assistant designed to provide clinicians with real-time, evidence-based medical insights at the point of care. The company’s flagship platform, HakeemDx, is a clinical decision support engine that integrates with hospital systems, including electronic medical records (EMRs) and laboratory platforms, to deliver bilingual clinical guidance to doctors in real time. Built for physicians, pharmacists, nurses, students, and healthcare organizations, the platform combines advanced AI models with a retrieval system that prioritizes trusted medical guidelines, peer-reviewed research, drug information, and clinical protocols before generating responses. 

In an interview with Inc. Arabia, Adi, whose background includes working with hospitals, regulators, payers, and universities across the MENA region alongside healthcare companies such as Wolters Kluwer, Novartis, and IBM Watson Health, said that the company’s origins are closely tied to his own personal experience. “In 2017, I lost my child to a medical error,” Adi shared. “That experience shaped a single question that has guided my work ever since: why are clinicians still expected to make life-critical decisions, while contending with fragmented information, persistent burnout, and an ever-expanding body of medical knowledge?” 

This question then evolved into the foundation of Hakeem Health, with the company being built with the explicit aim of helping clinicians access trusted, evidence-based answers instantly, at the point of care, to support patient safety and reduce medical errors. Today, Hakeem operates on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, serving hospitals, universities, and healthcare payers through recurring contracts, with access to more than 2,000 hospitals across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt.

The newly secured capital is thus set to support the broader adoption of HakeemDx across healthcare systems in the GCC and the wider MENA region. Abdulelah Alshareef, Principal at Merak Capital, told Inc. Arabia that it is Hakeem Health’s specialization in healthcare workflows, combined with strong customer adoption, that helped to distinguish the company in an increasingly crowded AI healthcare market. “In a market crowded with generic AI tools, Hakeem’s advantage comes from specialized healthcare data, domain-specific training, and AI embedded not only at the point of care but across multiple customer workflows," Alshareef said. "Most importantly, customers were actively using Hakeem in their day-to-day, and the platform’s usage metrics and renewals validated that it was delivering real, sustained value.” 

For Hakeem Health, the new investment follows a series of operational and commercial milestones for the company, which has helped validate both demand and scalability across regional healthcare markets. For one, the company has expanded across hospitals, universities, healthcare groups, and regulators in the GCC, reaching nearly 280 hospitals and academic institutions under multiple healthcare networks. At the same time, Hakeem Health has also built recurring revenue streams, established strategic partnerships with healthcare stakeholders, and developed bilingual AI capabilities tailored to Arabic and English clinical environments. 

Besides reinforcing investor confidence in the company’s traction, Adi highlighted that working to reach those milestones also elucidated the scale of the challenges that healthcare systems face worldwide. “The problem we are addressing is both urgent and structural," he pointed out. "Clinician burnout, medical errors, fragmented knowledge access, workforce shortages, and insurance pressure are becoming significant operational and financial challenges for healthcare systems globally. Second, AI adoption in healthcare is accelerating, particularly across the Gulf region, where governments are advancing ambitious digital transformation agendas. Third, our differentiation lies in domain depth. This is not an AI team approaching healthcare from the outside. The team combines substantial healthcare, operational, publishing, and enterprise clinical workflow experience with strong AI engineering capability... The long-term vision is for HakeemDx to operate as an embedded intelligence layer within healthcare systems, supporting clinical, operational, educational, and financial workflows across the region.” 

Meanwhile, for Merak Capital, the investment in Hakeem Health aligns with its broader strategy to back technology companies focused on AI and digital transformation as part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 agenda and the development of knowledge-based industries. Alshareef also noted that the benefits that AI-powered solutions can unlock in the sector are underestimated by many healthcare providers across the region. “Many healthcare providers in the GCC are still underestimating how much clinical time is lost on repetitive decision-making, information retrieval, and switching between systems," Alshareef said. "Physicians often must review patient history, lab results, medication lists, guidelines, and prior notes before making a decision. AI-powered clinical decision support can reduce that burden by surfacing the relevant information faster and helping clinicians act with more confidence. The value is not just in giving medical professionals answers, but in fitting this value into the moments where decisions happen, reviewing a patient file, interpreting labs, preparing a diagnosis, checking treatment options, or assessing whether a case needs escalation. When used this way, AI can help improve speed, consistency, and quality of care across hospitals, not just individual physician productivity.” 

As Hakeem Health now gets set to expand across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt, Adi noted that each market is adopting healthcare AI at a different pace, and with different operational priorities. For instance, while Saudi Arabia’s push is being driven by Vision 2030 and large-scale healthcare transformation efforts, the UAE has emerged as a fast-moving market for piloting AI-enabled healthcare solutions, particularly within the private sector. Egypt, meanwhile, presents a different dynamic, where affordability, accessibility, and productivity remain central considerations amid varying levels of digital maturity and infrastructure readiness. “Each market is progressing toward healthcare AI adoption, but at different speeds and with distinct priorities,” Adi added. 

Beyond institutional adoption, Adi also highlighted shifting clinician behavior across healthcare systems in the region. According to him, clinicians across the GCC are increasingly expecting AI-assisted workflows and faster access to evidence-based information, while younger clinicians and medical residents are adopting these technologies at a much faster pace than more senior generations. Trust and explainability remain central to adoption across all markets, with Adi noting that clinicians favored AI systems that provide evidence-backed support to aid decision-making, rather than replace clinical judgment. He also emphasized that seamless workflow integration is a more critical factor in adoption than the sophistication of the technology itself, as solutions that disrupt existing clinical workflows tend to face slower uptake. 

Reflecting on those evolving dynamics, Adi said that the industry’s biggest hurdles extend far beyond the technology itself. “The broader lesson is consistent: healthcare AI adoption is not solely a technology challenge," he said. "It is, in equal measure, a workflow, trust, governance, and change-management challenge.” That same reality also shapes how both Adi and Alshareef think founders should approach the sector. For them, building in healthcare is not about moving fast for the sake of growth, but about earning enough institutional trust for a product to become part of everyday clinical practice.

“For founders building in healthcare, our advice would be to build for trust before scale,” Alshareef added. “In clinical categories, institutions will not adopt a product simply because it uses AI. They need to see that it is accurate, secure, clinically relevant, and easy to integrate into existing workflows. The strongest products are the ones that become part of how healthcare professionals work every day, rather than adding another tool they need to use. Founders should focus on proving real usage, clear outcomes, and repeat adoption, because in healthcare, long-term trust is earned through reliability, not hype.” 

Adi echoed a similar perspective when discussing the realities of building healthcare technology companies in the region. “Healthcare is one of the most demanding industries in which to build, and one of the most meaningful," he said. "My principal advice is this: do not build healthcare AI from the outside. Take the time to understand clinical workflows, operational pain points, reimbursement structures, regulatory environments, and clinician psychology before developing products. Healthcare organizations do not purchase technology because it sounds innovative. They invest in solutions that reduce risk, improve outcomes, save time, support compliance, or strengthen financial performance.”

Pictured in the lead image is Hakeem Health founder Bilal Adi. Image courtesy Hakeem Health.