Dubai-based HR technology startup Cercli has raised $12 million in a Series A round led by Picus Capital, to enhance enterprise workforce management through artificial intelligence.
The funding also saw backing from Y Combinator, Afore Capital, and COTU Ventures, alongside several high-profile angel investors.
Founded by Akeed Azmi and David Reche, both former Careem operators, Cercli was built to solve a long-standing problem in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, fragmented HR systems and outdated compliance processes that fail to connect HR, payroll, and finance.
The company’s new AI-native architecture aims to unify these operations under one intelligent platform.
In just a year, Cercli has recorded 10x revenue growth, processed over $100 million in payroll across 50 countries, and expanded its customer base to include both startups and large corporations such as Vision Bank, Backlite Media, Global Climate Finance Centre, Huspy, Lean Technologies, and Ziina.
With the new capital, Cercli plans to expand its global footprint, strengthen its engineering team, and roll out new AI-native products designed to automate and simplify HR operations for businesses of all sizes.
The company is currently hiring top talent from global tech giants such as Google, Meta, and Rippling to ensure its platform remains fast, secure, and reliable.
Azmi explained that Cercli’s focus has always been on rebuilding HR infrastructure from the ground up, not just layering AI onto existing systems. “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,” he said.
“We didn’t want to just integrate AI; we wanted to rethink the whole stack for how people and agents work together.”
That rethink is already boosting Cercli’s services. Its new AI-driven recruitment assistant, Cera, now allows companies to manage hiring from application to onboarding, all within the same system.
Cercli’s internal operations also rely on AI, with treasury and reconciliation agents managing its finances as the company maintains an average 21% month-on-month revenue growth.
According to Robin Godenrath, founding partner at Picus Capital, Cercli’s integrated approach to workforce management and its early traction made the investment a natural choice. “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,” he said.
Cercli’s Series A round also represents Picus Capital’s first investment in the MENA region, highlighting growing investor trust in the region’s HR-tech potential, an industry projected to exceed $5.8 billion in value.
Cercli is scaling further, and its founders believe that being AI-native gives them a distinct advantage. “Customers are asking for everything in one place, and being AI-native allows us to build that unified experience far more quickly,” Azmi noted.
The startup wants to deliver a single, intelligent platform that manages people, data, and processes seamlessly across borders, and to do so faster than any legacy company ever could.
