Technology
AI agents for e-commerce startup, founded by Google and DeepMind alums, raises $10M seed

AI is changing how we shop online, making our experiences more personalized. Smart assistants recommend products, negotiate deals, and even handle customer service. Big retailers and smaller businesses are using AI to improve search, supply chains, and checkout.
If AI companies (and their investors) have their way, shopping will soon be focused on chatting with an assistant, with businesses automating everything behind the scenes.
Dubai-based Qeen.ai (stylized as qeen.ai) is working to make this a reality in the Middle East and beyond. The startup has raised $10 million to scale its platform, which provides autonomous AI agents for e-commerce businesses.
Prosus Ventures, a major e-commerce investor, led the seed round, which is not only one of the largest in the Middle East’s AI industry but in MENA overall. The VC believes Qeen.ai is well-positioned to bring AI-driven automation to merchants as AI agents reshape online marketplaces.
Founders Morteza Ibrahimi (CEO), Ahmad Khwlieh (CTO), and Dina Alsamhan (CBO) started Qeen after years of working on AI at Google and DeepMind.
Ibrahimi, in an interview with TechCrunch, said that they honed in on e-commerce in part opportunistically: all three had worked at Google Ads in various roles during their time with the search giant, and they saw first-hand how other alums built highly successful e-commerce businesses. On top of their AI expertise, the trio knew how to run ads and optimize SEO exceptionally well and thought it could be a strong combination.
Google and DeepMind background
E-commerce has been steadily growing for years, but apart from certain spikes (particularly during holiday periods) it still accounts for between 15% and 20% of retail sales (even in a mature market like the U.S. it was only just over 16% at of the last quarter, per the U.S. Census Bureau).
Qeen’s thesis is that this could grow if the e-commerce processes were run better. Success in e-commerce, they believed, should be about great products and operational efficiency — not just who can game the ad system best. That insight led them to build a platform that helps e-commerce sellers grow without relying on ads as their primary driver.
The global e-commerce market is expanding fast, driven by changing consumer behavior, digital payments, and better logistics. In MENA, the market is expected to hit $50 billion by 2025, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE leading the growth.
Qeen.ai is tapping into this boom by developing AI-powered marketing agents designed for e-commerce businesses across MENA. These fully automated agents handle content creation, marketing, and conversational sales, allowing small and mid-sized merchants to compete without relying on expensive agencies or deep ad expertise.
Unlike traditional solutions, Qeen’s AI continuously learns from consumer interactions using its proprietary RL-UI technology, refining marketing strategies in real-time for better results.
From Google ads to AI-driven e-commerce
While AI-powered sales and customer service tools often struggle with high churn rates, as businesses frequently switch platforms, Qeen.ai claims to see stronger retention in e-commerce and marketing. Ibrahimi attributes this to how deeply Qeen’s AI agents integrate into merchants’ workflows, making them a core part of daily operations rather than a replaceable tool.
A key feature driving engagement is dynamic text personalization, which adjusts content based on user behavior and device type. For example, an iPhone user might see product details in bullet points for quick reading, while a laptop user gets a detailed paragraph.
Since launching its Dynamic Content agent in Q2 2024, Qeen.ai has served over 15 million users, generated 1 million SKU descriptions, and helped merchants increase sales by 30%, according to the company.
“We worked with a client to optimize their content and SEO. After using our AI plugins, their search volume increased by 40%, and their Google ranking improved from 22 to 18—all with zero manual effort. The entire process was fully autonomous,” said Ibrahimi, giving another instance where Qeen’s AI capabilities have shone.
Qeen employs a subscription-based pricing model and incorporates value-based pricing, a growing trend in AI services. Currently, Qeen generates revenue through two subscription models: content automation, where businesses pay per active SKU, typically $0.10 to $0.20 per SKU per month. Then its AI marketing agent whose pricing is based on per-interaction volume.
Ibrahimi declined to disclose the number of businesses using Qeen, as well as revenue growth metrics. Notable clients include Dubai Store, 6th Street, and Jumia.
Standing out… with talent
Ibrahimi left DeepMind in early 2023 to co-found the startup. That same year, the company raised a $2 million pre-seed round before launching its product in June 2024. With its recent $10 million seed round, qeen has raised a total of $12 million in under a year.
During this time, AI-powered marketing agents have gained traction worldwide, with several startups, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, entering the space. Competitors like YC-backed Unusual and Rankai are tackling similar challenges, so how does Qeen stand out?
Well, for one, most of these AI startups focus on developed markets, while Qeen instead is prioritizing the Middle East first—a region largely underserved by AI-driven marketing automation tools. According to Ibrahimi, Qeen will serve small businesses across MENA, establish a strong foothold, and then expand globally.
Deep tech expertise and a strong talent pool give Qeen an edge over new entrants, the chief executive added. Two of its co-founders earned PhDs in AI over a decade ago, long before AI became mainstream. Ibrahimi himself previously led a DeepMind research team specializing in self-learning, goal-driven AI agents—the same technology that now powers Qeen.
“One of the most exciting things we’ve seen is the quality of AI talent here,” Ibrahimi said. “We’ve attracted great talent both locally and internationally—people have left the Bay Area, Europe, and the UK to come here and build with us.”
Qeen.ai currently employs over 25 people across the UAE and Jordan.
The seed funding will support qeen’s growth strategy by expanding its AI platform, scaling its team, and attracting more customers, it said. Wamda Capital, 10X Founders Fund, and Dara Holdings are among the other investors in this round.

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Technology
TikTok is back on the App Store and the Play Store in the U.S.

Apple and Google on Thursday evening restored TikTok to their respective app stores in the U.S. on Thursday, several weeks after they removed the short video platform following a national security law that banned it in the country.
The companies has also removed other apps owned by TikTok’s parent company ByteDance — video editor CapCut and social media app Lemon8 — and on Thursday restored them as well.
Former U.S. President Joe Biden had passed the law last year, calling on ByteDance to sell TikTok to a company that wasn’t owned by a Chinese entity by January 19. The law was spurred by concerns that the company’s ties to Beijing threatened national security, and would have imposed severe financial penalties on app store operators if they didn’t comply. The Supreme Court had upheld the law on January 17.
But right after he assumed office, current U.S. President Donald Trump on January 20 signed an executive order aimed at delaying the law, and gave a 75-day extension to ByteDance to find a seller.
TikTok promptly restored services in the country, but Apple and Google kept the app out of their stores since there was some confusion regarding the penalties that would be imposed since the law had only been deferred.
For users in the U.S., those who had uninstalled TikTok were not able to reinstall it, but those who didn’t have been able to use it. Earlier this month, TikTok urged Android smartphone users to sideload the app.
Since then, Trump has said that he would like the U.S. to own a 50% share in TikTok through a joint venture with other tech companies. He also inaugurated a sovereign fund that could participate in TikTok’s dealmaking.
Last month, CNBC reported that TikTok’s traffic was restored almost 90% from the pre-ban time according to Cloudflare Radar data. However, rival social networks are trying to bank on this uncertaintly. Both X and Bluesky launched dedicated vertical video feeds while Meta announced a video editing app that would rival Capcut.
According to data from analytics firm Sensor Tower, TikTok was the second most-downloaded app in the country last year, with 52 million downloads.

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Technology
Alibaba confirms Apple deal bringing AI features to iPhones in China

Alibaba on Thursday confirmed recent reports of a partnership with Apple that’s set to bring AI features to iPhones sold in China. The deal is an important one for Apple, as iPhone sales have dropped precipitously in the world’s largest smartphone market. The handset experienced an 11% year-over-year drop in China, according to Apple’s most recent earnings report.
Apple “talked to a number of companies in China,” Alibaba chairperson Joseph Tsai said Thursday during Dubai’s World Government Summit. “In the end they chose to do business with us. They want to use our AI to power their phones. We feel extremely honored to do business with a great company like Apple.”
According to reports, Apple’s earlier deal with China’s Baidu has been plagued with issues adapting the search giant’s AI offering. Apple is also believed to have explored partnerships with ByteDance and DeepSeek, prior to settling on Alibaba. These sorts of partnerships are key to U.S. companies like Apple as they work for regulatory approval in China. Both Alibaba and Apple have reportedly submitted relevant materials to local authorities.
Ahead of the company’s most recent earnings call, CEO Tim Cook cited the absence of Apple Intelligence, the company’s in-house generative AI solution, as a contributing factor in slowing international sales.
“During the December quarter, we saw that in markets where we had rolled out Apple Intelligence, that the year-over-year performance on the iPhone 16 family was stronger than those markets where we had not rolled out Apple intelligence,” the executive told CNBC.
The company has banked on Apple Intelligence to drive the next major iPhone “super cycle” – a term referring to a dramatic uptick in device sales. Apple’s speed and strategy in rolling out its own generative AI solution hampered its growth, as Google continues to deliver new Gemini features by way of Samsung phones, Pixel devices, and various other Android offerings.
Increased domestic competition has also eaten into Apple’s China market share. Vivo took the lead in the fourth quarter of last year, with 17% of the market, according to figures from research firm, Canalys. Huawei, which has seen a massive rebound following sanctions from the first Trump administration, grew shipments 37% year over year, scoring a second-place finish at 16% market share. Apple, which commanded 24% of the market the same time last year, dropped to 15%, putting it in a third-place dead heat with Xiaomi and Oppo.
Apple is banking on the Alibaba deal to help regain some of that marke, but even if the partnership passes regulatory scrutiny, Apple’s China future isn’t crystal clear. Tariffs and trade tensions are likely to further impact sales in the key market.
The company has notably been cozying up to Donald Trump during the President’s second term. Cook donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee in January. More recently, Apple followed Google’s lead by changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on its Maps app.
TechCrunch has reached out to Apple for additional comment on the Alibaba deal.

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Technology
US pharma giant Merck backs healthcare marketplace HD in Southeast Asia

Big Tech and pharmaceutical companies are accelerating the implementation of artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry. Just last month, AWS and General Catalyst announced their partnership to speed up the development and deployment of healthcare AI tools. GE Healthcare teamed up with AWS to build generative AI for medical use in 2024.
Now, a Thailand-based healthcare startup, HD, has built a marketplace, HDmall, to digitize the fragmented medical industry in Southeast Asia. The startup helps users find healthcare providers like hospitals and clinics. It also assists people in finding specific surgeries and health check-ups, aggregates services to lower costs and provides users with installment payment options.
The startup has secured $7.8 million in equity funding to enhance its marketplace and invest further in its AI technology. The recent funding marks the first investment of U.S. pharma giant Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) in a healthtech startup in Asia Pacific. (MSD is the brand that Merck uses to operate outside the U.S. and Canada, and it launched an accelerator called IDEA Studios last June.) Other participants in HD’s funding included SBI Ven Capital, M Venture Partners, FEBE Venture, and Partech Partners also participated in the latest financing.
“MSD, which produces the HPV vaccines, reached out to [us] because we were already selling a lot of HPV vaccines online that were being administered at the hospitals and clinics we work with,” co-founder and CEO of HD Sheji Ho said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch. “And if you look at the numbers, we [offer] the largest number for vaccines online in the markets.”
The five-year-old startup’s marketplace has over 30,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) from more than 2,500 hospitals and clinics and a handful of pharmaceutical partners and 400,000 paying customers across Thailand and Indonesia, generating $100 million in annual gross transaction volume, Ho noted. It aims to reach 5,000 healthcare providers and 600,000 patients in 2025.
The latest financing, which brings HD’s total funding to $18 million, comes less than a year after it raised a $5.6 million round.
In early 2024, HD started building an AI chatbot, Jib AI, which has been trained on anonymized healthcare product data, transaction data, and chat commerce data sets using advanced large language models. After implementing generative AI technology in its marketplace, almost 60% of customer interactions are managed by AI agents, which deliver “high-quality, instant 24/7 response to customers”, Ho said.

Jib AI helps healthcare professionals like nurses, doctors, and surgeons focus on providing quality patient care by handling most initial triaging and care navigation tasks.
Over the next 12 months, the company aims to improve its AI agent capabilities by adding order and refund processing, assisted checkouts, scheduling, electronic health record checking, and medical information retrieval with the Jib AI Health Assistant and via AI-powered asynchronous virtual care with expert physicians.
The startup also says it plans to expand its network of external partners over the next two years, focusing on insurance and pharmaceutical companies, as well as employers and educational institutions.
“While US healthcare companies such as Transcarent and Accolade started directly with B2B care navigation, we see a unique opportunity in Southeast Asia to adopt a ‘B2C2B strategy’ as defined by Andreessen Horowitz,” Ho told TechCrunch. “This approach leverages our existing B2C success to transition into B2B, effectively pursuing enterprise monetization from the outset.”
Healthcare in Southeast Asia
Most venture-backed healthcare startups in Southeast Asia, including Singapore’s Doctor Anywhere, Halodoc and Alodokter in Indonesia, primarily focus on telehealth and virtual health services. But Ho says the approach is not sustainable in Southeast Asia. “Post-pandemic, telehealth as a business model in SEA has encountered significant challenges and is rapidly losing favor among both consumers and investors.”
The company now positions itself as a mix of Amazon One Medical in the U.S., Chinese outpatient healthcare platforms like JD Health and Alibaba Health, and the Indian inpatient healthcare platform Pristyn Care.
The healthcare industry is quite different in emerging Southeast Asian markets such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Without a family doctor system like in Western countries, patients often go straight to hospitals or clinics. This makes it difficult for patients to find the right healthcare services, know where to go, and understand how to handle the costs, Ho told TechCrunch.
Due to 40% of healthcare costs being paid by individuals and low levels of private health insurance coverage, people are more sensitive to prices and feel more pressure when making decisions. This leads to a growing demand for platforms that offer clarity, transparency, and ease of comparison among various providers, Ho continued.
HD’s platform operates more like the “Amazon of healthcare.” Instead of listing individual GPs or offering physician appointment scheduling, it enables healthcare providers to sell productized services. “Our offerings range from health check-ups, cancer screenings, and IVF procedures to root canal treatments, HPV vaccinations, and surgeries like thyroid and hemorrhoid surgeries. This approach aligns with how most people in the region begin their healthcare journeys—by searching for specific services rather than individual doctors,” Ho said.
HD provides its services in Thailand and Indonesia, and it plans to enter Vietnam and eye Myanmar because of their similar healthcare systems.
“Their healthcare model is quite similar in some ways to Mainland China. So it’s a high cash payment, around 40%. There is no family doctor system, so people go straight to hospitals or clinics; thereafter, government social security coverage comes into play,” Ho told TechCrunch. “But those budgets are getting smaller and smaller. This means that more of the pressure to cover healthcare is shifting towards the private sector, whether it’s through cash or private insurance. This is why insurance going forward presents a big opportunity for us.”
Moreover, there is a rising trend towards self-empowerment in terms of user behavior in these markets. They are getting more accustomed to using tools such as Google Search or ChatGPT to search for healthcare-related subjects. This aligns well with what HD provides, as it empowers individuals to make their own healthcare choices, according to Ho.

A blog which focuses on business, Networth, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Self Improvement, Celebrities, Top Lists, Travelling, Health, and lifestyle. A source that provides you with each and every top piece of information about the world. We cover various different topics.
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