Cercli, UAE’s workforce platform for enterprises, has raised $12 million to create the single platform for enterprises to manage their people, data and agents in the AI era.
The round was led by Germany-headquartered Picus Capital with participation from Knollwood Investment Advisory, existing investors Y Combinator, Afore Capital, and COTU Ventures.
Individual investors include Prabhakar Reddy from OpenFX, Jaime Arrieta from Buk, Marco Ogliengo and Francesco Scalambrino from Jet HR, Francesco Simoneschi from Truelayer, Mehdi Ghissassi from AI71.
“The growth momentum we’ve seen in the past 12 months has been remarkable and played a key role in attracting talent, customers and investors,” said Akeed Azmi, co-founder and CEO of Cercli. “Businesses recognise the benefit of a unified platform as a single source of truth in managing their greatest asset, their people. For us, it’s an exciting time to be building for the AI era, as there is a once in a lifetime opportunity to disrupt the 800 pound gorillas in the ERP market that was long held untouchable by the likes of Workday, SAP and Oracle.”
With clients ranging from startups to large multinational corporations, including Vision Bank, Backlite Media, Global Climate Finance Centre, Huspy, Lean Technologies and Ziina, Cercli has processed payroll distributions across 50 countries, totalling over $100 million in employee salaries this year alone in the MENA region and beyond.
With 22% MoM growth, Cercli is addressing the $5.8 billion HR software market opportunity in MENA, with enterprises still using legacy ERP systems which haven’t evolved for the needs of the modern workforce. The regional market is experiencing rapid modernization, with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 program alone driving over $500 billion in economic projects requiring modern workforce management capabilities.
Cercli’s AI strategy was designed to first deploy internal AI solutions, which enabled new products and features to be shipped faster and meet customer needs. This speed has enabled business leaders to migrate entire organisations to Cercli’s platform within 48 – 72 hours, instead of 9 months with legacy software providers, leading to increased demand from upmarket enterprises.
“Cercli has a unique founding team which is evident from the velocity of their product expansion strategy. They are shipping incredibly fast, in a region undergoing rapid transformation and a tech-savvy workforce that wants AI-native solutions for workplace management.” said Robin Godenrath. Founding Partner, Picus Capital. “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.”
As part of this investment, Cercli will focus on the development of new AI-native products and services, further building out into adjacent products as customers seek to shift to an all-in-one suite.
“We recognised the need to not just add new features but to rebuild workforce management from the ground up with AI at its core,” said David Reche, co-founder and CTPO of Cercli. “This gives us a fundamental advantage in delivering the efficiency, integration and intelligence that modern businesses need. As we scale, we’re focused on attracting world-class talent from around the globe to join our mission of transforming how businesses manage their workforce – human or agentic.”