Morocco's royal holding Al Mada leads $12 million round in AI startup Journify

Al Mada Ventures, the venture capital arm of Al Mada, the investment holding controlled by Morocco's royal family, has led a $12 million Series A funding round in Journify, a startup that feeds customer data to the algorithms that place online ads.

The round values Journify at four times its previous valuation, the company said in a statement on Nov. 3. Silicon Badia, a returning investor that led Journify's seed round, co-led the investment. Shorooq and Bunat Ventures increased their stakes, while Du Ventures and Oraseya Capital joined as new investors.

Journify will use the money to expand into the U.S. and Europe and to build more artificial intelligence into its platform.

The company, founded in 2022 by Taoufik El Jamali, Amine Chouki and Omar Al Shoubaki, is based in San Francisco and has offices in Dubai and Riyadh. Its software checks purchase, sign-up and in-store sales data and sends it, with customer consent, to Google, Meta, TikTok, Snap and Amazon Ads, so their systems can target ads more accurately. More than 100 businesses use the platform, accounting for hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly ad spending. Saudi retailer Jarir Bookstore raised its return on ad spending on Meta by 182% after adopting it, the company said.

"AI is transforming advertising, but the intelligence behind it is only as good as the signals it receives," said El Jamali, Journify's co-founder and chief executive officer.

Omar Laalej, managing director of Al Mada Ventures, said the firm was drawn to Journify's "privacy-first foundation that can evolve into intelligence and action."

Hossam Shafick, a partner at Silicon Badia, said that since his firm's first investment, "Journify has grown its valuation by more than 4x, and its revenues more than 5x." Silicon Badia led a $4 million round in the company in February 2025.

The royal investor

Al Mada set up Al Mada Ventures as an evergreen fund of about 1.1 billion dirhams ($110 million), raised entirely from African capital. It writes checks of $500,000 to $1 million at the seed stage and $2 million to $6 million in Series A and B rounds, and targets a portfolio of about 20 companies. Laalej, who runs it, previously co-founded the Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund.

Its parent, based in Casablanca, is one of Africa's largest private investment groups. Al Mada holds controlling or large stakes in some of the kingdom's biggest companies, including Attijariwafa Bank, mining group Managem, telecom operator Inwi, power producer Nareva and retailer Marjane, and invests in 27 countries, 25 of them in Africa.

The group is controlled by the family of King Mohammed VI, who has ruled Morocco since 1999. The Journify deal gives the royal holding a stake in a company now pushing into the U.S., the world's biggest advertising market, where digital ad revenue reached $294.6 billion last year.