Insider Brief
- UAE-based fintech Pluto has raised a pre-Series A funding round at $4.1 million.
- The round is led by existing and new investors, including Rhino Ventures, Born Capital, Goanna Capital, Evolution VC, Freesearch VC and Tiferes VC.
- Founded in 2021 by Mohammed Ridwan, Mohammed Aziz and Nayeem Zen, Pluto enables businesses to streamline their spending management using virtual and physical cards with specific spend controls.
PRESS RELEASE — Pluto, UAE’s leading corporate card and expense management platform, has announced the successful raise of $4.1 million in a pre-Series A funding round. The news comes just weeks after co-founder Mohammed Ridwan announced that the company had crossed AED1 billion in spend under Pluto’s management.
The round was led by existing and new investors, including Rhino Ventures — a leading early-stage venture capital firm in Canada, Born Capital — a venture capital firm exclusively backing CFO-focused technologies, Goanna Capital — known for its investments in Ramp, Rippling and Figma, Evolution VC who has backed unicorns like Brex, Ramp and Freshbooks, Freesearch VC and Tiferes VC.
“Pluto is delivering a winning product to a market underserved by modern procure-to-pay solutions. Their vision to be the future back office for enterprises is consistent with an AI-augmented world. Having demonstrated a speed of execution and quality of product on par with global leaders in the space, we feel privileged to partner with the team at Pluto,” says Rhino Ventures.
Pluto has previously received backing from Silicon Valley spearheads, including investment leaders like Ramp, Soma Capital, Graph Ventures and angel investors including Plaid Co-founder Willliam Hockey, Not Boring’s Packy McCormick and past executives from Cash App, Shopify, Amazon and more.
Founded in 2021 by Mohammed Ridwan, Mohammed Aziz and Nayeem Zen, Pluto’s platform unifies dynamic budget tracking, AI-powered corporate cards with an unmatched cashback program, petty cash management, procurement, invoice and vendor management into a single, intuitive product. Since its inception, Pluto has rapidly gained traction across SMEs & enterprises in the UAE, working with leading companies including Property Finder, Knight Frank, Tamara, Petrochem and more.
Launching Pluto Connect
With Pluto Connect, recently launched as a flagship solution, Pluto introduces a new business model that allows banks and financial institutions to seamlessly embed its corporate card and spend management capabilities directly into their own products, allowing banks to modernise their commercial banking capabilities. Pluto currently powers more than 30,000 SMEs through Pluto Connect with one of the largest banks in the world. With this fresh injection of capital, Pluto will double down on its bank-integrated approach, forging additional partnerships globally — with markets including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar — and further enhancing its AI-driven capabilities to deliver on a fully automated Account Payables management platform for SMEs.
“In 2025, SMEs expect way more from their banks than just using them as depository accounts. Value added services are a key strategy for most banks in the region. Partnering with banks and financial institutions allows Pluto to bring our world-class solutions to more customers globally and allows such institutions to provide a world-class experience back to their customers,” said Mohammed Aziz, CEO of Pluto.
Pluto stands apart in the UAE as the only platform serving banks and integrating every critical aspect of financial management — from AI-driven spend control to modern procurement management to automated invoice management — into a single, unified solution. By eliminating the need for shared corporate cards, manual data entry and lengthy reconciliation periods, Pluto empowers banks and financial institutions to deliver a seamless, value-added experience that deepens customer relationships, streamlines workflows and drives meaningful financial efficiency for SMEs.
This raise is a significant step forward in Pluto’s growth strategy. The news follows recent achievements, including being ranked #1 in EMEA for Procure to Pay Solutions and recognised as a Top 10 provider globally in both Enterprise and SMB Expense Management by G2, Pluto’s collaboration with neoleap by Al Rajhi Bank to expand operations into Saudi Arabia, and Pluto’s strategic partnership with Mastercard to further fuel B2B payment solutions across the GCC.
Featured image: Credit: Pluto
