DUBAI: Saudi venture capital firm STV was among the major investors in a recent $2.25 million funding round by Dubai-based cybersecurity firm SpiderSilk.

In addition to Riyadh-based STV, the tech firm was also backed by Dubai-based Global Ventures and several international angel investors, and it plans to use the financing to expand its footprint in the Middle East and launch into the North American market.

Ahmad Al-Naimi, an investment partner at STV, was quoted as saying: With new and increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats, there is a need for an innovative approach to cyber protection and monitoring.

According to STV, investments into the global cybersecurity space amounted to $50 billion last year, with $2 billion of that going to the Middle East.

At STV, we have always described ourselves as investors in bridging the dichotomy between digital supply and digital demand. Cybersecurity is the perfect sector to demonstrate this division despite our region being a critical market for cybersecurity vendors, it is the market with the lowest VC cybersecurity funding, the company wrote in a blog post.

In an article in October 2020, STV said it had led 30 percent of all venture capital funding in the Kingdom since 2018.

It also claimed that, while it had $500 million in capital, its portfolio of companies, including Careem, Trukker and Tabby, had processed transactions worth over $3.7 billion and had generated revenue of $480 million.

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