In a region long defined by fragmented enterprise systems, outdated compliance tools and HR software that rarely speaks to economics, Cercli is building a unified alternative for MENA businesses with artificial intelligence at its core.
The Dubai-based startup, founded by former Careem operators Akeed Azmi and David Reche, has announced an oversubscribed $12 million Series A round led by European VC Picus Capital.
Cercli today looks a little different from the company that raised a $4 million seed round last year. It rebuilds a Rippling-like stack for the MENA region, but makes it AI-native from scratch.
Over the past year, that effort has paid off. The company says it has scaled revenue more than 10x and now processes over $100 million in payroll annually for multiple companies in 50 countries.
But in a crowded HR tech market—where dozens of startups like Deel and Remote, along with incumbents like SAP and Oracle, already promise everything from cross-border payments to payroll—why does the market need another HR tech player? CEO Azmi hopes its AI-first rebuild can be the edge that sets it apart.
Azmi started Cercli to help companies with basic human operations, a problem he and Reche noticed at their previous employers, Careem and Kitopi, two of MENA’s best-known unicorns.
With payroll spread across multiple systems and compliance varying by region, the first version of Cercli focused on a platform that consolidated HR management, payroll and compliance for MENA-based companies operating globally.
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But Azmi says it envisioned a bigger opportunity if it baked into AI. So over the past three months, Azmi says the company has rewritten its entire payroll engine to be multi-country and agent-compatible, allowing it to scale more efficiently across global jurisdictions.
“The legacy systems of the last 20 years — your SAPs, Oracles, Workdays — they were built for on-prem and the cloud. Now we’re entering an AI-native world,” Azmi said in an interview with TechCrunch. “We didn’t just want to integrate artificial intelligence; we wanted to rethink the entire stack of how humans and agents work together.”
It has also done the same with its recruitment module. Cercli now offers agent-driven capabilities that can display candidate lists, source from internal datasets, and run background logic on employability.
Its own internal operations run on AI, as the company uses purpose-built treasury and reconciliation agents to manage its own finances and accounting. That’s how the 14-person team closed its Series A while maintaining 21% monthly revenue growth, according to Azmi.
In addition to AI, the founder believes that Cercli’s other strength lies in consolidation. Although there are plenty of multi-module HR competitors – including Deel, Rippling, BambooHR – MENA companies often stitch together their back office from point solutions. A company can use different products for expense management, payroll or recruitment.
“Customers ask for everything in one place, and being AI-native allows us to build the unified experience much faster,” explained Azmi.
Azmi said Cercli’s AI-native architecture also lets it onboard customers quickly. Setup can be done in two to three days, compared to several months typical with older systems, he claims. This has helped the two-year-old HR-tech startup win clients from startups to multinationals, including Vision Bank, Global Climate Finance Centre, Huspy, Lean Technologies and Ziina.
Cercli is also the first MENA investment for Picus Capital. This company has backed other global HR companies such as Personio, Multiplier, Deel, Maki and JetHR.
Other investors that participated in this Series A round include Knollwood Investment Advisory as well as existing investors Y Combinator, Afore Capital and COTU Ventures.
As part of the investment, the company plans to build new AI-native products and work to gain more market share in the $5.8 billion HR software opportunity in MENA.
“We’ve seen this business model succeed globally across our portfolio, and we’re excited to support Cercli as they continue to grow market share through new customers and product launches,” said Robin Godenrath, Founding Partner at Picus Capital.