Announcing 1001’s $30 million Series A

We are excited to announce that 1001 has raised a $30 million Series A led by Lux Capital, with participation from existing investors General Catalyst, CIV, Chris Re. We’re also thrilled to welcome our newest partners Sanabil Investments, Hanabi, 9Yards, alongside angel investors: Karim Atiyeh, Kareem Amin, Russell Kaplan, Shayan Shafii, Daniel Garber, and Junaid Hussain.

When we introduced 1001 six months ago, we said the next industrial leap would not come from another chatbot. It would come from AI that changes how the physical world runs. 

That future is arriving faster than expected.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the Middle East. Across the region, governments are not treating AI as a side project. Deployment is being coordinated at the national level. New airports, ports, logistics corridors, and infrastructure programs are being executed with extraordinary pace, scale, and urgency. The region is not waiting for applied AI to mature somewhere else. It is becoming the proving ground.

1001 exists to build for this moment.

We are building the AI operating system for critical industries: decision infrastructure for the institutions that move the physical world. 1001 sits above the systems an organization already runs, unifies fragmented data into a live operational layer, and helps operators make better decisions under real-world constraints.

1001 is already deploying in a sovereign-scale environment. The momentum we are seeing confirms our conviction that there is no better time to build 1001, and no better place to call home than the Middle East.

This financing will allow us to grow our engineering, operations, and deployment teams, deepen our work in mission-critical environments, and continue proving that frontier AI capability can be built, deployed, and governed locally, not just purchased from abroad.

We are grateful to our customers, partners, colleagues, and investors for supporting us on this journey.

You can read our full thesis, Sovereignty through AI, below.

We are actively hiring exceptional engineers, researchers, and operators to build trusted AI systems for the institutions that move the physical world. Explore open roles here.

Sovereignty through AI

A deep shift is underway across the Middle East: from capital to capability.

For years, the region was seen primarily as a customer and a source of capital. That story is now incomplete. At 1001 and across the region, a new ambition is taking shape: capability. The Middle East is not just investing in the future but architecting it – building the technical and operational muscle to drive real technological transformation.

At 1001, that is the work in front of us. Our thesis is simple: sovereignty in the next decade will depend in part on whether countries and institutions can build, operate, and govern trusted AI systems in the sectors that matter most. In this region, that need is especially clear. So is the opportunity to meet it.

Sovereignty is more than a slogan. This region’s unique geopolitics are a challenge and an opportunity that demands self-reliance. Our belief is that the Middle East’s capability now matches this need. For 1001, sovereignty is practical. It means the ability to run critical systems with trusted decision infrastructure. It means talent that can build and operate frontier systems, not just procure them. And it means deployments that are governed, auditable, and resilient enough for the physical world.

The proving ground

This region is becoming one of the most demanding proving grounds in the world for applied AI. That is exactly why 1001 is being built here.

New airports, ports, and logistics corridors are rising quickly. Large-scale infrastructure programs are being executed with enormous complexity. Across these environments, operators are under constant pressure to increase throughput, improve reliability, and bend cost curves, all while making decisions across thousands of moving parts and real-world constraints.

At 1001, we see a simple pattern. Capability is not built through planning exercises or pilots that never reach production. It is built through real deployments inside live operations, where outcomes are measurable and accountability is non-negotiable.

That is the real shift underway. The story worth telling is not “AI is coming.” The story is that the region is building the native institutional and technical depth to deploy applied AI in the physical world, and 1001 is designed to be the engine for these capabilities.

The corridor: US startup velocity and MENA scale

A real corridor is emerging between US builder velocity and Middle Eastern operating scale. It sits at the center of 1001’s strategy.

The US has the deepest technology ecosystem in the world. It has builder density, a culture of immediacy, and a playbook for turning ambitious ideas into products that scale.

This region offers something different, but just as consequential: greenfield infrastructure, operational urgency, and sovereign-scale environments where technology meets reality fast. These are the settings where applied AI either earns trust or fails.

Put the two together and you get more than a market. You get a compounding advantage: technical velocity paired with live operational complexity, where deployments generate trust, insight, and durable capability.

At 1001, we are building the company, team, and deployment footprint to make that corridor real.

That flywheel is straightforward:

• Hard deployments create real advantage: edge cases, operational knowledge, trust, and compounding improvements.

• Real advantage attracts world-class talent, because the problems are consequential and feedback loops are immediate.

• Talent ships faster, deployments deepen, and an ecosystem forms around the work.

This is how enduring technology ecosystems are formed: not by importing products, but by growing the capacity to build and operate them.

Why 1001 exists

1001 exists to make this thesis operational.

We are building an AI-native operating system for decision-making in critical industries. Our goal is simple: make smarter decisions, faster, in the flow of operations, with outcomes you can count and oversight you can trust. What matters is whether these systems perform reliably in live operations, under real-world constraints, with clear responsibility and control.

In practice, 1001 is a bridge between two things that rarely meet in one place: frontier technical talent and mission-critical operational complexity. We are building a home for builders who want to ship into the physical world and for operators who need AI systems accountable enough to run real environments.

The next chapter

Sovereignty through AI means being able to build and operate trusted systems in the sectors that matter most. It is about readiness. It is about operating critical systems with trusted decision infrastructure, and it is about builders having a place to do their best work in the environments that will define the next decade.

That is the work ahead: stronger local capability, deeper deployment in critical industries, and AI systems that can earn trust in the real world. That is where 1001 is focused.