Backing the Builders of Tomorrow’s AI Stack
At Propeller, our story has always been one of builders backing builders.
When we launched our first fund in 2017, we set out to support technically ambitious founders from the Middle East building products with global potential. Over the years, we’ve evolved into a global firm — with a presence in Riyadh, Amman, Boston, and Silicon Valley — united by a single belief: that the world’s most enduring companies are born at the intersection of great infrastructure, great talent, and great timing.
Today, we’re proud to announce Propeller Fund III — a $50 million fund designed to back founders building the backbone of tomorrow’s digital economy: the horizontal AI infrastructure and AI-native applications redefining how the world builds and operates software.
Artificial intelligence isn’t simply one aspect of the digital economy — it will power all aspects of the digital economy.
Over the next decade, AI adoption will be the single largest driver of enterprise and economic value creation. Global AI spend is expected to exceed $337 billion in 2025, doubling again by 2028. More than 70% of those budgets will go to infrastructure — the new “picks and shovels” of this era.
Legacy systems simply can’t handle the complexity of modern AI workloads. Enterprises are racing to rebuild their infrastructure stacks to support LLMs, agents, and real-time inference. As they do, we see opportunity across every layer of the stack:
This is the largest platform shift since the PC revolution. When businesses adopted personal computers between 1990 and 2003, they invested over $1.5 trillion to rebuild their technology stacks — and the investors who backed the infrastructure winners at each layer (from Red Hat to Juniper Networks) saw returns of 25x–500x.
We believe the AI transformation will dwarf that moment in both scope and economic impact.
Every great technological wave starts with infrastructure. The AI wave is no different — but this time, it’s global.
We believe AI infrastructure is the multiplier that enables everything else. Strong infra makes applications scale faster, safer, and cheaper. In turn, the best applications reinforce that infra, creating a flywheel of compounding value across the stack.
We believe durability beats hype every time. The most valuable companies aren’t the ones chasing trends, but the ones solving hard, enduring problems — in orchestration, observability, security, and performance.
We believe talent is the ultimate scarce resource. GPUs can be bought, but world-class technical founders can’t. Our mission is to find and empower those founders — the ones with the severe conviction to run through walls and the humility to keep building when the noise fades.
And we believe bridges matter — especially between MENA and North America. North America remains the world’s center stage for technological advancement, founder talent density, and the most dynamic, mature startup ecosystem in the world. The MENA region is becoming a force in global AI development, powered by capital, compute, and an emerging generation of engineers.
Connecting the two — talent to opportunity, infrastructure to market — is where Propeller thrives.
Every venture firm talks about access and networks. Ours is built differently.
We see founders when and where others can’t. We’re the first stop for technical founders from the MENA region looking to build global companies — often too early, too technical, or too underestimated for traditional Venture. In North America, our deep networks and community participation enables us to see founders with sharp infrastructure theses who want partners embedded in the next major AI frontier from the first steps of their journey.
We’re builders first, investors second. Our team has founded, scaled, and exited software companies. We’ve built infrastructure ourselves, hired engineers, and lived through the emotional rollercoaster of early-stage building. That’s why we can evaluate deep tech with peer-level clarity and support founders as true partners — from code to fundraising to go-to-market.
We’re embedded on both ends of the MENA–US bridge. We maintain close relationships with strategic decision-makers influencing AI infrastructure across both regions — venture investors, enterprise buyers, hyperscalers, and hardware providers.
This gives our founders unique access to early customers, compute partners, and follow-on capital — the trifecta every AI company needs to win.
Propeller’s first two funds have backed 30+ startups and generated top-decile returns among MENA-born venture funds.
Our evolution reflects our conviction: small beginnings, sharp focus, and growing global reach — all compounding into a durable platform for the next decade of deep tech founders.
We’re not just investing in AI; we’re investing in the builders rewriting the rules of how AI is built.
The infrastructure for the world’s next explosion of economic value is being laid right now — by founders who see what’s possible when models meet metal, when infrastructure meets creativity, and when global ambition meets the right partners.
If you’re one of those founders, we want to meet you.
Let’s build the backbone of the AI era — together.