A Dubai-based corporate card and expense management platform, Pluto, has raised US$4.1 million in a pre-Series A funding round.
The round was led by existing and new investors, including Rhino Ventures, a Canada-based early-stage venture capital firm; Born Capital, a VC firm exclusively backing CFO-focused technologies; Goanna Capital, a US-based global private markets investment firm; and Evolution VC, a sector-agnostic VC firm that has backed unicorns like Brex, Ramp and Freshbooks; as well as early-stage VC entities Freesearch VC and Tiferes VC.
This announcement is coming just weeks after co-founder Mohammed Ridwan announced that the company had crossed AED1Billion in spend under Pluto’s management.
Founded in 2021 by Ridwan and his fellow co-founders Mohammed Aziz and Nayeem Zen, Pluto’s platform unifies budget tracking, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered corporate cards with a cashback program, petty cash management, procurement, invoice and vendor management into a single, intuitive product.
Since its inception, Pluto has rapidly gained traction across small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as major corporations in the UAE, and has already worked with the likes of Property Finder, Knight Frank, Tamara, and Petrochem.
Note that the startup has previously received backing from Silicon Valley spearheads including names like Ramp, Soma Capital, Graph Ventures as well as angel investors including Plaid Co-founder Willliam Hockey, Not Boring’s Packy McCormick and past executives from Cash App, Shopify, Amazon and more.
Pluto’s latest milestone, however, has been its flagship solution Pluto Connect which was launched at the start of January 2025. With it, the startup has introduced a business model that allows banks and financial institutions to seamlessly embed Pluto’s corporate card and spend management capabilities directly into their own products, allowing banks to modernize their commercial banking capabilities.
What Pluto’s founders are saying about the app…
Currently empowering more than 30,000 SMEs, Ridwan notes that Pluto Connect is addressing crucial pain points of what is clearly a pivotal economic sector in the UAE.
He said, “SMEs in UAE contribute to 63.5% of the non-oil GDP, with forecasts estimating the numbers of SMEs will grow to $1 million by 2030- but despite being a crucial part of the economy, the financial products available to SMEs are often costly or unsuitable for their needs, even though they make up a significant portion of financial institutions’ customer bases.
“With Pluto Connect, we empower Banks and Financial Institutions to provide their customers with a Corporate Card & Spend Control platform that rivals the world-class solutions offered by Silicon Valley unicorns.
“This allows banks to offer cutting-edge software as part of their value-added services, helping SMEs gain access to tools that enable them to manage budgets, control employee spending, and streamline non-payroll expenditures in a seamless and efficient manner.”
With new capital now at its disposal, the Pluto team aims to build on Pluto Connect’s potential by continuing to eliminate the need for shared corporate cards, manual data entry and lengthy reconciliation periods through empowering banks and financial institutions to deliver a seamless, value-added experience that deepens customer relationships, streamlines workflows and drives meaningful financial efficiency for SMEs.
