In a region long defined by fragmented enterprise systems, outdated compliance tools, and HR software that rarely talks to finance, Cercli is building a unified alternative for MENA businesses with AI at its core.

The Dubai-based startup, founded by ex-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 slightly different from the company that raised a $4 million seed round last year. It is rebuilding a Rippling-like stack for the MENA region, but making it AI-native from the ground up.

Over the past year, that bet has paid off. The company says it has scaled revenue more than 10x and now processes over $100 million in payroll annually for multiple businesses across 50 countries.

But in a crowded HR-tech market—where dozens of startups such as Deel and Remote, alongside 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 may be the edge that sets it apart.

Azmi started Cercli to help enterprises with basic people operations, an issue 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 human resources management, payroll, and compliance for MENA-based companies operating globally.

But Azmi says it envisioned a bigger opportunity if it baked in AI. So, over the past three months, Azmi says the company has rewritten its entire payroll engine to be multi-country and agent-compatible, enabling 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 want to just integrate AI; we wanted to rethink the whole stack for how people and agents work together.”

It’s also done the same to its recruitment module. Cercli now offers agent-driven features that can surface candidate lists, source from internal datasets, and run background logic on hiring fit.

It’s own internal operations run on AI, as the company uses custom-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 a 21% month-to-month revenue growth rate, according to Azmi.

Beyond AI, the founder believes Cercli’s other strength lies in consolidation. Although plenty of multi-module HR competitors exist — including Deel, Rippling, BambooHR — MENA companies are often stitching their back office together from point solutions. A company might use different products for expense management, payroll or recruiting.

“Customers are asking for everything in one place, and being AI-native allows us to build that unified experience far more quickly,” Azmi explained.

Azmi said Cercli’s AI-native architecture lets it onboard customers quickly, as well. Setup can occur in two to three days, compared to several months typical with legacy 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 firm has backed other global HR companies like Personio, Multiplier, Deel, Maki, and JetHR.

Other investors who 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 on gaining more market share in the $5.8 billion HR software opportunity in MENA.

“We’ve seen this business model succeed globally within our portfolio, and we are excited to back Cercli as they continue to grow market share through new customers and product launches,” said Robin Godenrath, founding partner at Picus Capital.