Ruya Partners Limited, the ADGM-based private credit firm focused on investing in the GCC and the wider MENA region, has announced a $15 million senior secured private credit facility for Whiteshield Group, the AI-native policy intelligence company with principal operations in the UAE and KSA.
The facility, provided by funds managed by Ruya, finances the next stage of Whiteshield’s development as it expands the proprietary technology it builds for governments, multilateral institutions, and corporates around the world.
As AI accelerates economic, labor market, and societal change, governments face a new challenge: adapting faster than the systems they govern. Whiteshield helps governments move from periodic policymaking to policy at the speed of compute.
Fadi Farra, CEO of Whiteshield, said that, “My partners and I built Whiteshield to help governments translate ambition into measurable outcomes for citizens. For decades, governments have invested in information systems.”
“The next era is intelligence systems. Our ambition is to build the sovereign intelligence layer that enables nations to learn, decide, and adapt at the speed of change. Ruya understood what we’re building from the first conversation, and structured their capital to back where we’re going, not just where we are – a rare kind of backing in this region,” Farra added.
For Ruya, the transaction extends a strategy of writing flexible, structured credit for high-quality, founder- and partner-owned businesses that are anchored in the region yet relevant well beyond it.
It also reflects the way Ruya invests, global in standards, local in focus, pairing internationally benchmarked structuring and portfolio management with deep regional conviction.
Whiteshield is the seventh investment from Ruya’s flagship fund and its first in the sovereign intelligence category. Ruya is supported by leading regional institutional capital, including sovereign and sovereign-linked investors across the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and its earlier investments span power, industrial, fitness, food, media-tech, and logistics-tech.
“The companies we most want to finance share a common trait: they hold an advantage no competitor can replicate. For Whiteshield, that isn’t the technology; it’s the trust of the institutions it serves and demand rooted in real government priorities. Backing a business with a moat like that, with capital structured around how it actually grows, is precisely what we set out to do in a region that is rapidly transforming its economy,” stated Rashid Siddiqi, Partner and Co-Chief Investment Officer at Ruya.
