Oman’s sleepy tech sector showing signs of promise

At a challenging moment for Middle East startups navigating an investment downturn in 2024, glimmers of a new breakthrough could be emerging in a quiet corner of the region’s tech sector: Oman. 

In July the Omani carbon removal startup 44.01 announced that it had raised $37 million from investors including global players like Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund and Siemens alongside local backers including the UAE’s Shorooq Partners. They join other investors including Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s Apollo Projects that have now invested in 44.01, which is named after the molecular weight of carbon dioxide (CO2). 

Founded in 2020, the startup is developing technology that quickly gets rid of planet-warming CO2 by turning it into rock, offering a decarbonization solution that could prove attractive for numerous industries and governments eying climate goals. Alongside global appeal, this could be a groundbreaking deal for Oman’s tech sector, which lags far behind neighboring Gulf powerhouses Saudi Arabia and the UAE.  

For context: 44.01’s $37 million investment alone is more than quadruple the amount of funding other Omani startups raised across the past two years combined. In 2023, startups in the sultanate secured a total of $4.8 million across 8 deals, a pittance compared to Saudi Arabia’s $2.3 billion and the UAE’s $977 million, according to data published by startup investment platform Wamda. Still, some see potential in the country of 4.7 million, the third largest in the wealthy GCC region. “As a smaller market Oman is often overlooked as a startup ecosystem, however, it is an untapped market,” said Abdullah Al-Shaksy, CEO of Phaze Ventures, a venture capital (VC) firm that launched in 2018 in Oman.