Sawt

Sawt (Arabic for 'voice') is a Riyadh-based startup founded in 2024 by Abdulmalik Al-Saeed, formerly editor-in-chief of Saudi podcasting platform Thmanyah. It builds Arabic-native voice AI models, developed in Saudi Arabia, that power always-on AI voice agents for enterprises. The agents handle inbound and outbound calls, book appointments, answer customer inquiries, create support tickets, and follow up with customers, aiming to reduce call-center wait times and repetitive workloads. Sawt integrates with business systems such as Salesforce, Zoho Desk, and HubSpot, and markets itself on multi-dialect Arabic support and enterprise-grade data privacy from being built locally. In July 2025 the company raised a $1 million pre-seed round led by T2 and STV — the first investment from STV's Google-backed AI fund — after having served dozens of businesses and handled hundreds of thousands of voice interactions within its first two months.