Cold Water: Comfi's $65M is mostly debt, and that is fine as long as we say so

DUBAI — Headline: a Dubai fintech founded in 2023 raises $65M at pre-Series A, one of the largest early-stage numbers of 2026 in the region.

Actually: Wamda’s report describes the round as mixed equity and debt. Iliad Partners led the equity with Yango Ventures and Raw Ventures alongside; Partners for Growth provided a credit facility; Shorooq added mezzanine; a regional family office joined. The equity portion was not broken out. The company’s product, which lets SME suppliers offer 90-day terms while getting paid within 24 hours, needs a funded receivables book to exist, so the debt is not a trick. It is the business.

So what: the number a founder puts in a headline and the number that dilutes the cap table are different numbers, and MENA press releases increasingly report the first. That is why heat on this desk is computed on equity, with debt and sukuk subtracted first, and why Comfi’s record reads 40° rather than the 50° a $65M equity round would earn. When the split is reported, the reading moves.

The same lens applies to FlyAkeed’s SAR 94.3M of equity and sukuk led by Sanabil, to Nayla’s $18M with a BLOMINVEST debt facility, and to Enhance’s $18.2M with Stride’s venture debt. None of these are bad rounds. Lenders who underwrite a book have seen the credit losses that no release reports, and their presence is a signal in its own right. The desk’s only rule is that a credit facility is not a valuation, and the tracker will keep saying so in italics next to the number.

Source: Wamda