YC alum Cercli, an AI-powered Rippling for MENA, raises oversubscribed $12M Series A

In a region long defined by fragmented business systems, outdated compliance tools and HR software that rarely interacts with finance, Cercli is building a unified alternative for MENA companies with AI at its core.

The Dubai-based startup, founded by ex-Careem operators Akeed Azmi And David Rechehas announced a $12 million Series A round led by European VC Picus Capital.

Cercli looks a little different today than the company that raised a $4 million seed round last year. It rebuilds a Ripple-like stack for the MENA region, but makes it AI-native from the ground up.

Over the past year, that bet has paid off. The company says it has increased revenue more than tenfold and now processes more than $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, alongside established companies like SAP and Oracle, are already promising everything from cross-border payments to payroll – why does the market need another HR tech player? CEO Azmi hopes the AI-first rebuild can be the advantage that sets it apart.

Azmi founded Cercli to help companies with basic human operations, a problem he and Reche noticed with their previous employers, Careem and Kitopi, two of MENA’s best-known unicorns.

Because payroll is spread across multiple systems and compliance varies by region, the first version of Cercli focused on a platform that consolidated workforce management, payroll and compliance for MENA-based companies operating globally.

But Azmi says it envisioned a bigger opportunity if it incorporated AI. To that end, Azmi says that over the past three months the company has rewritten its entire payroll system to be compatible with multiple countries and agents, allowing it to scale more efficiently across global jurisdictions.

“The legacy systems from the last twenty years (your SAPs, Oracles, Workdays) were built for on-prem and the cloud. Now we are entering an AI-native world,” Azmi said in an interview with TechCrunch. “We didn’t just want to integrate AI; we wanted to rethink the whole stack for how people and agents work together.”

The same has been done with the recruitment module. Cercli now offers agent-driven functions that can display candidate lists, gather resources from internal datasets, and run background logic for staff eligibility.

Its own internal operations run on AI, as the company uses custom treasury and reconciliation agents to manage its own finances and accounting. That’s how the 14-person team closed Series A while maintaining 21% month-over-month revenue growth, Azmi said.

In addition to AI, the founder believes that Cercli’s other strength lies in consolidation. While many multi-module HR competitors exist – including Deel, Rippleing and BambooHR – MENA companies often merge their back office from point solutions. A company can use different products for expense management, payroll, or recruiting.

“Customers want everything in one place, and because we are AI-native, we can build that unified experience much faster,” Azmi explains.

Azmi said Cercli’s AI-native architecture also makes it possible to onboard customers quickly. Installation can take place in two to three days, compared to several months typical for older systems, he claims. This has helped the two-year-old HR tech startup win clients from startups to multinationals, including Vision Bank, the 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 who participated in this Series A round include Knollwood Investment Advisory and 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 increase market share in the $5.8 billion HR software opportunity in MENA.

“We have seen this business model succeed globally across our portfolio, and we are excited to support Cercli as they continue to grow their market share through new customers and product launches,” said Robin Godenrath, founder of Picus Capital.