AI in Oman

Oman's startup support machinery keeps expanding, but it rarely announces deadlines with much fanfare. This roundup pulls together the accelerator cohorts, government grants, and entrepreneurship programmes that founders in Muscat, Duqm, and beyond should be watching in September and October 2026, split between AI-focused tracks (which get an extra month of lead time) and general startup support.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• The Oman Technology Fund's Techween (pre-seed) and Wadi Accelerator (seed) programmes run rolling cohorts twice a year; founders should email OTF now to confirm the H2 2026 intake window.
• MTCIT's new Sas for Excellence initiative offers up to RO 1 million in financing plus wage support for up to 40 Omani employees, and applications remain open on a rolling basis.
• A new Industrial Business Accelerator from Riyada, Madayn, and the Industrial Innovation Academy launches in September 2026, though its application window closed on August 12; watch for the next intake.
• The Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry's fifth Franchise Programme begins implementation in September 2026, targeting 26 Omani brands.
• General, always-open options like the National Business Centre, Oman Development Bank, and Future Fund Oman continue accepting applications year-round.

🤖 AI Startup Programs (September & October 2026)

AI-focused founders get extra runway in this roundup, since serious accelerator applications typically take weeks to prepare. Here is what is realistically open through October.

1. OTF Techween (Pre-Seed)

Run by the Oman Technology Fund, Techween provides USD $50,000 in pre-seed funding for 7% equity, plus co-working space at Knowledge Oasis Muscat and a 12-week mentoring track. OTF runs two cohorts a year but does not publish exact opening dates. Deadline: Rolling, H2 2026 cohort window not yet confirmed. Founders should email info@otf.om or call (+968) 2417 2717 directly to ask about the current intake.

2. OTF Wadi Accelerator (Seed Stage)

One rung up from Techween, Wadi Accelerator targets startups with a working product and early customer traction, offering USD $100,000 in seed funding across a three-month programme for roughly 10 startups per batch. Deadline: Rolling, same H2 2026 window as Techween. Same contact channel: info@otf.om.

3. MTCIT Sas for Excellence

Launched in June 2026 by the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, Sas for Excellence is aimed at mature, fast-growing Omani tech companies (AI, cybersecurity, and electronic systems design) rather than first-year startups. It bundles up to RO 1 million in direct financing, wage subsidies for up to 40 Omani employees, and priority access to government procurement. Undersecretary Dr Ali bin Amer Al Shidhani said the initiative is designed to help Omani technology companies "develop and own locally built digital solutions" while strengthening the country's digital self-sufficiency. Deadline: Rolling, no fixed cutoff announced. Details and the application portal are at sas.om.

4. Numo-Microsoft for Startups Accelerator (Watch List)

MTCIT's Numo programme, run with Microsoft, gives Omani ICT startups free Azure credits, access to Microsoft's AI tools, and go-to-market mentorship. Its third edition, with 66 participating companies, launched in April 2026 and that application window has since closed. MTCIT has not yet announced a fourth edition, but given the programme's cadence, a new call could land before year-end. Deadline: Not yet announced; monitor the Numo platform for a September or October update.

🚀 General Startup Programs (September 2026)

5. Industrial Business Accelerator

A new joint initiative from the Industrial Innovation Academy, Riyada, and Madayn launches in September 2026 and runs for six months across two tracks: Industrial Innovation Development (15 startups) and Industrial Venture Creation (15 entrepreneurs or business owners). Support includes specialised training, prototype development, mentoring, and integrated office space at Madayn facilities. The application window closed on August 12, 2026, so this round is shut, but the six-month cohort runs into 2027 and a next intake is likely. Follow the Industrial Innovation Academy's social media channels for the next call.

6. OCCI Franchise Programme (Fifth Edition)

The Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry begins implementation of its fifth Franchise Programme in September 2026, an eight-month track that helps qualify 26 Omani brands for franchise expansion by documenting operational systems and preparing them for local and international franchise agreements. This is less a startup accelerator than a scale-up programme, but it is one of the few structured entrepreneurship tracks with a confirmed September start. Contact OCCI directly for enrollment details, as specific application procedures were not published.

7. National Business Centre (NBC)

Operating under Madayn (PEIE) at Knowledge Oasis Muscat, the NBC remains the most accessible entry point for early-stage Omani founders who want subsidized office space and mentorship without giving up equity. Deadline: Rolling, applications accepted year-round.

8. Oman Development Bank

The bank offers loans from OMR 5,000 to OMR 1,000,000 at rates of 2 to 5% annually, with interest-free options available up to RO 15,000 for qualifying entrepreneurs. This channel now also effectively absorbs the financing role once handled separately under the Al Raffd Fund umbrella. Deadline: Always open, with a typical 6 to 12 week assessment period through the bank's online platform.

9. Future Fund Oman

Backed by the Oman Investment Authority with $5.2 billion in committed capital, Future Fund Oman allocates 3% of its capital specifically to startups and 7% to SMEs. In July 2026, the fund announced a new package of 105 projects worth $1.744 billion, spanning renewable energy, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, and tourism. Deadline: Rolling, year-round submissions through futurefund.om.

Riyada's ongoing Entrepreneur Readiness Programme is also worth a mention here, not as a funding source but as a prerequisite many founders take before approaching Oman Development Bank. Over 8,200 people enrolled in the first half of 2026 alone, with more than 7,600 earning the Entrepreneur Readiness Certificate, according to Times of Oman. Registration stays open year-round through gov.om.

For founders who tracked our earlier coverage of the ecosystem, our June 2026 startup support guide remains a useful comparison point, since several of the always-open programmes listed there, including the NBC and Oman Development Bank, carry through unchanged into this fall's list.

🇴🇲 Why This Matters for Oman

None of these programmes individually will transform Oman's startup scene overnight, but together they show a system maturing in layers: rolling seed capital from OTF, growth-stage financing from MTCIT's Sas for Excellence, sector-specific accelerators like the new Industrial Business Accelerator, and always-open safety nets through the National Business Centre and Oman Development Bank. That layered approach is exactly what Vision 2040 calls for: a pipeline that can take a founder from idea to export-ready company without leaving the Sultanate. The gap that remains is transparency around deadlines. Several of the programmes covered here, from OTF's cohorts to the Numo accelerator, still require a direct email or a social media follow just to find out when applications open. As Oman's ecosystem matures, publishing fixed, predictable application calendars would do as much for founder confidence as any single grant.

While much of Oman's SaaS conversation this year has centered on younger startups, one Muscat-based company has quietly built one of the region's fastest-growing enterprise software businesses: Rihal. With a $7.5 million first close on a $15 million Series A round, a 300-person team, and a client roster that includes Omantel, Bank Muscat, and Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), Rihal offers a rare look at what a mature, home-grown Omani SaaS company looks like.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Rihal (legally Data Migration and Services LLC) was founded in Muscat around 2018 by Azzan Al Kindi, Asim Al Shabibi, and Waleed Al Harthi
• The company runs four named SaaS products: Jadawel (data collaboration), Eysal (invoice automation), Hasad (time tracking), and Iqraa (AI document extraction)
• Rihal closed $7.5 million of a targeted $15 million Series A in September 2025, led by ITHCA Group, the tech investment arm of the Oman Investment Authority
• The company has grown at a 119% compound annual growth rate since its 2021 launch phase and ranked third on Deloitte's Middle East Technology Fast 50 with 2,441% growth over four years
• Team size has passed 300, with 80% in technical roles, 90% local Omani talent, and 43% women
• Clients span government, telecom, banking, and oil and gas, positioning Rihal as an enabler of Oman's Vision 2040 digital economy goals

🚀 What Rihal Actually Does

Strip away the buzzwords and Rihal is, at its core, a company that helps large organizations stop drowning in paperwork and spreadsheets. It builds and sells four cloud-based products, according to details published on the company's own services page:

• Jadawel: a cloud collaboration and database platform where teams build custom tables, forms, and workspaces instead of relying on scattered Excel sheets, with an AI layer ("Jadawel AI") for automated analysis
• Eysal: an invoice processing tool aimed at cutting the manual, error-prone approval chains that slow down finance departments
• Hasad: a time-tracking system built for professional services firms that bill by the hour
• Iqraa: an AI-powered data extraction platform that pulls structured information out of both structured and unstructured documents, useful for organizations still buried in paper records

Around these products, Rihal also runs consulting-style service lines in Intelligent Process Automation, artificial intelligence, data management, and software engineering, which is how it built relationships with large enterprise clients before productizing what it learned into SaaS tools.

🎯 Who Rihal Serves and the Problem It Solves

Rihal's client base is heavily weighted toward institutions that generate huge volumes of documents and data: government entities, telecom operators, banks, and oil and gas majors. Public case studies and partner listings point to work with Omantel, Bank Muscat, PDO, Omran, and, through its OutSystems partner profile, seven government e-services and workflow projects.

The underlying pitch is simple: these organizations are still running on document-based, manual processes, and Rihal's job is to move them to a "data-driven mentality," as the company describes its mission on its about page. That is the same structural problem tackled by smaller local players covered previously on this site, such as the tender-digitization platform profiled in our SafaQat feature, though Rihal operates at a larger enterprise and government scale.

💰 Pricing Model

Rihal does not publish pricing for Jadawel, Eysal, Hasad, or Iqraa. Its product pages direct interested organizations to "book a free demo session" or contact the sales team directly, which is standard practice for enterprise B2B SaaS sold through direct sales cycles rather than self-serve signup. Given the client profile (government bodies, banks, and energy companies), pricing is almost certainly negotiated per contract rather than offered as a fixed monthly tier.

🛠️ Tech Stack and Technical Approach

Rihal has been a certified OutSystems partner since 2022, using the low-code platform to build web and mobile e-services applications for government clients quickly. Beyond low-code delivery, the company describes a proprietary "Rihal Data Engine with built-in automation capabilities" powering its data management practice, alongside in-house machine learning work underpinning Jadawel AI and Iqraa's document extraction models. Co-founder and CTO Waleed Al Harthi has said the company has focused on growing an in-house Omani engineering team rather than outsourcing core development, an approach that lines up with the 90% local-talent figure Rihal has publicly cited.

🏆 Rihal's USP vs. Competitors

Globally, invoice automation, document extraction, and low-code database tools are crowded categories, with competitors ranging from UiPath and Airtable-style products to large systems integrators. Rihal's edge is less about a single killer feature and more about positioning: it combines several enterprise SaaS products under one roof with deep, existing relationships inside Oman's government and energy sectors, an advantage that is difficult for foreign vendors to replicate quickly in a market where trust and Arabic-language, government-compliant delivery matter. Locally, it competes less with consumer-facing Omani SaaS startups and more with regional systems integrators and multinational enterprise software vendors trying to win the same government and oil and gas contracts.

📈 The Journey So Far

Public records place Rihal's founding around 2018, with the Oman Startup Hub listing its formal establishment in January 2019 and its entry into the Hub's programs in April 2020. The company has since grown from a niche data-migration specialist into a broader digital transformation and SaaS provider, according to ArabFounders' funding coverage.

Two milestones stand out in 2025:

• Rihal ranked third on Deloitte's Middle East Technology Fast 50 (third edition), posting 2,441% growth over four years, as reported by Oman Observer
• In September 2025, Rihal announced a $7.5 million first close of a targeted $15 million Series A round, led by ITHCA Group, the venture arm of the Oman Investment Authority, according to Wamda and The SaaS News

The company says it has posted a 119% compound annual growth rate since its 2021 seed round, a figure cited in company statements carried by Tribe Techie and Day of Dubai. Rihal's second close remains open to strategic investors as it works to complete the full $15 million target.

ITHCA Group's leadership echoed that confidence. "Rihal's performance has been nothing short of exceptional. Their ability to rapidly scale, innovate, and penetrate diverse, high-value sectors is why we are proud to lead their Series A round," said Said Al Mandhari, CEO of ITHCA Group, in comments carried by Tribe Techie. Ameer Al-Alawi, ITHCA's Director of Asset Management, added that "Rihal is one of those rare players with the right leadership, traction, and vision to scale beyond Oman and into the broader GCC."

👥 Team and Leadership

Rihal's founding team consists of three co-founders: Azzan Al Kindi (CEO), Asim Al Shabibi (COO), a former Schlumberger product and service delivery manager who managed roughly $400 million in well project execution before co-founding Rihal, and Waleed Al Harthi (CTO), who previously worked on digital projects with Shell, PDO, BP, OQ, and OLNG. Their LinkedIn profiles are public: Azzan Al Kindi, Asim Al Shabibi, and Waleed Al Harthi.

Per the company's own funding announcement, the team has grown past 300 people, with 80% in technical roles, 90% Omani nationals, and 43% women, a workforce composition that also feeds directly into Oman's Omanisation targets. Readers tracking the broader local hiring market can compare this against our recent roundup of AI and tech jobs currently open in Oman, where enterprise software roles of this kind regularly appear.

🇴🇲 Rihal and Oman's Vision 2040

Rihal's business model, helping government bodies and state-linked companies digitize document-heavy processes, sits squarely inside Vision 2040's push toward a diversified, digital-first economy. Its client list (Omantel, Bank Muscat, PDO, Omran) reads like a checklist of the institutions Vision 2040 wants to see modernized, and ITHCA Group's backing, as the investment arm of the Oman Investment Authority, signals that the state sees enterprise SaaS as a strategic sector worth funding rather than just a side story to consumer apps. A 90% Omani workforce inside a fast-scaling tech exporter is also a rare, tangible example of Omanisation and digital-economy goals reinforcing each other rather than competing.

Why this matters for Oman

Most locally covered SaaS success stories in Oman so far have been young, small teams solving a single problem. Rihal shows a different, complementary path: a seven-year-old, 300-person company graduating from IT services into a multi-product SaaS portfolio, backed by sovereign capital, and competing regionally against much larger international vendors. If its Series A closes at the full $15 million target and its GCC expansion plans hold, Rihal could become one of the clearest proof points that Oman can build, not just import, the enterprise software its government and largest companies depend on.