Saudi Arabia-headquartered Intella, an artificial intelligence start-up, has secured $12.5 million from investors including Aramco's venture capital fund.

The funding round for the AI firm specialising in building AI models for Arabic dialects was led by Prosus and participated by Wa'ed Ventures, 500 Global, Hala Ventures, Idrisi Ventures and HearstLab.

Intella will use the fresh capital to widen its offerings and fund its expansion in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Plans include scaling teams in Saudi and Egypt, where the company was founded, to meet rising demand.

Intella specialises in Arabic speech services, offering transcription, analytics and AI-powered customer engagement tools.

(Writing by Cleofe Maceda; editing by Seban Scaria seban.scaria@lseg.com)