This is the first in an occasional series on global research alliances, which many founders are sitting on without knowing it.
I’ve spent over a decade building VersatilePhD into one of the largest PhD career networks in the world, with more than 120,000 members across 130+ research universities. Our fastest-growing segment is now founders: PhD researchers who are commercializing their work rather than taking the traditional academic or corporate path.
One thing I’ve learned working with these founders is that the global research alliances that universities build—with governments, sovereign funds, and research institutions around the world—are among the most underused commercial assets available to start-ups. Based on what I’m seeing across the network, founders who have activated these connections are doing so almost by accident: a chance conversation with a Gulf-based faculty member, or a conference introduction that happened to lead somewhere. That’s not a strategy. It should be.
This week the Brief turns to one of the most consequential of those alliances: the connections between US R1 universities and the deep tech ecosystems of MENA and Israel.
Two ecosystems worth knowing
The capital numbers make the case quickly. MENA startups raised a record $7.5 billion in 2025, with the UAE capturing $2 billion, and Saudi Arabia $5 billion. By 2026 the UAE’s VC and angel market alone is estimated at $1.5–$2 billion annually, the largest in MENA. Israel operates at comparable scale but with a different level of maturity: Tel Aviv University and the Technion are the only two non-US institutions in the global top 10 for alumni-founded venture-backed companies, with combined alumni raising over $53 billion in the past decade. Deep tech specifically raised $1.34 billion in Israel in 2025, a 56% increase over 2024, and is widely recognized as a leading source of innovation.
These two ecosystems offer deep tech momentum that rivals Europe, and a set of warm university relationships with institutions that most US-based PhD founders have never thought to use.
A quick view of the landscape in the table below.
How can a PhD founder enters this ecosystem? In almost every case it runs through a university institution rather than a VC firm, government program, or outreach to a sovereign fund. Here are three models, with different archetypes, each with a direct entry point for PhD founders at US R1 universities.
Model 1: Accessing a Research Powerhouse
KAUST: sovereign-backed, spin-in ready, globally recruiting
Most deep tech ecosystems ask founders to come to them with a company that’s already formed. KAUST inverts this model by asking researchers to come with an idea and then provides the infrastructure to turn it into a venture.
KAUST has crossed a significant milestone: its portfolio of spinout companies has now raised more than $1 billion from local and international investors. Founded in 2009 with commercialization as a founding mandate, it has spun out close to 120 companies, many of which are now attracting capital from both regional and global venture firms.
KAUST’s funding structure is layered deliberately. The KAUST Innovation Fund provides seed investments of up to $250,000 and follow-on funding of up to $1 million. Silicon Valley-based Capital K, a $200 million deep tech fund, supports scale-up financing. And the TAQADAM Accelerator awards $40,000 in non-dilutive funding to all participating startups, along with mentorship, training, and access to KAUST’s research infrastructure.
What makes KAUST globally unique is the spin-in model. Most university commercialization programs only work with their own researchers. KAUST’s Destination Deep Tech program actively recruits leading-edge international startups and provides access to world-class R&D facilities, academic and industry connections, and office space at the KAUST Research and Technology Park. International startups including Pasqal (quantum computing, France), Proteinia (AI protein design, Egypt), and Insignes-Labs (antimicrobial materials, Poland) have all participated. The door is open but most international founders don’t know it exists.
For PhD founders at US R1 universities with existing KAUST research collaborations — and there are more than most people realize — the spin-in program is the most direct non-dilutive entry point into the Saudi deep tech ecosystem available. Before approaching any Gulf VC, map whether your research has a KAUST connection. If it does, that conversation happens before any Gulf VC conversation.
Model 2: The Campus Bridge
NYU Abu Dhabi, Texas A&M Qatar, Carnegie Mellon Qatar: the R1 university in Gulf context
The spin-in model requires active outreach to KAUST. The campus bridge model requires nothing more than walking through a door that is already open.
US R1 universities with Gulf campuses have built functioning research and commercialization pipelines inside Gulf ecosystems, and any PhD founders already affiliated will have warm introductions to Hub71, QSTP, and sovereign fund program officers that cold outreach cannot replicate. Most have never used them.
NYU Abu Dhabi is the clearest illustration of what this pipeline looks like in practice. ChatSign, a deep tech AI startup founded by an NYU Abu Dhabi faculty member, progressed from research concept to patent-protected functional prototype in 2024–2025. It received early validation through live campus deployment, showcased at Make it in the Emirates, Dubai AI Week, and the GITEX Expand North Star global startup competition, and is now in discussions with partners across sectors and continents. That trajectory — from lab to global pitch stage — happened inside the NYU Abu Dhabi ecosystem, using the institutional infrastructure that was already there.
NYU Abu Dhabi’s startAD program formalizes this pathway: an AI for Good initiative creating a structured route from capability-building to implementation, through AI Sandbox competitions and Market Access Day events connecting innovators with delivery partners and pilot opportunities across the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
The pattern at Texas A&M Qatar and Carnegie Mellon Qatar follows similar logic, with engineering-heavy research programs with direct links to the energy, petrochemical, and advanced manufacturing sectors that are the commercial backbone of Saudi and Qatari industry. For a PhD founder in materials science, energy technology, or advanced engineering, an existing affiliation with any of these campuses is a commercial asset.
The practical question for founders at these institutions: has your department’s international research coordinator mapped what commercialization pathways exist through your Gulf campus? In most cases, the answer is no. That conversation is worth having before any external investor conversation.
Model 3: The Military-Academic Pipeline
Technion, Tel Aviv University: unit alumni, deep VC, global exits
Israel’s commercialization model is structurally different from either of the preceding two, offering different opportunities.
Where KAUST was built top-down with sovereign capital and a commercialization mandate, and where Gulf campus programs extend existing US institutional infrastructure into new geographies, the Israeli model grew organically from the intersection of compulsory military service, elite technical education, and a culture that treats failure as information rather than stigma.
The numbers reflect that compounding: Tel Aviv University ranks seventh globally for alumni-founded venture-backed companies, with approximately 865 alumni founders raising roughly $30 billion over the past decade. The Technion ranks tenth, with 783 alumni founders raising $23 billion. Israel is the only country outside the United States with two institutions in the global top 10. Deep tech companies in Israel raised $1.34 billion in 2025, a 56% increase over 2024.
The exit that signals the ecosystem’s maturity: Wiz, co-founded by Unit 8200 veterans, was acquired by Alphabet for $32 billion in March 2025, the largest acquisition of a venture-backed Israeli company in history.
What makes this model accessible to US PhD founders is the institutional bridge that already exists. The Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech in New York City is a functioning US-Israel research collaboration that PhD founders at Cornell can activate for commercialization purposes without relocating. Over 180 multinational corporations, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Intel, and NVIDIA, have established R&D centers in Tel Aviv, creating a corporate venture layer that sits alongside institutional VC and provides early-stage validation pathways for deep tech founders.
The Abraham Accords, nascent as they are, have added a dimension that didn’t exist five years ago: formal UAE-Israel business and research channels that make an Israel-Gulf corridor strategy viable for the first time. Israeli deep tech ventures now routinely access Gulf capital and deployment markets. For a PhD founder building in biotech, AI, or climate tech whose research has connections to both Israeli institutions and Gulf campuses (and through VersatilePhD’s network, more exist than you might expect) that corridor is worth mapping explicitly.
One caveat: the 2023–2025 conflict created significant disruption — talent mobility, international investor hesitancy, and operational complexity all increased. The ecosystem has shown remarkable resilience but founders entering Israel-based partnerships should map the current operating environment carefully before making structural commitments.
What the three models have in common
Different structures, different histories, different capital profiles. But the same underlying principle: the entry point is warm, institutional, and already closer than most PhD founders realize.
The mistake most founders make is treating MENA and Israel as cold markets to pitch into; they are not. They are ecosystems with institutional anchors, such as KAUST, NYU Abu Dhabi, the Technion-Cornell bridge that exist specifically to connect international research talent to regional capital and deployment markets.
One more thing worth understanding before your first Gulf conversation: the capital structure itself is unlike anything in the US or EU.
Tensions in 2026
The current geopolitical environment gives some founders pause about pursuing connections in this region. The advice here is simple: take the long view and follow the money. Like any ecosystem, it has structural constraints worth understanding before you build your strategy around it, but there is no reason to avoid MENA and Israel as an option to accelerating your research or idea into a venture.
Here are few obstacles to consider:
Gulf:
Talent mobility. Visa and residency requirements for non-Gulf nationals have improved significantly under Vision 2030 but remain more complex than Singapore or the EU. The Golden Visa programs in UAE and Saudi Arabia provide long-term residency for qualified founders, but require existing traction to qualify. You need to plan.
Exit environment. MENA’s IPO and M&A market remain tiny compared to the US or EU, and most exits have been acquisitions by regional corporates or secondary sales rather than public listings. This affects how Gulf VCs model returns and which ventures they prioritize. Deep tech founders with long development timelines need to understand that the Gulf exit horizon is still being established, and investor expectations need to be understood from the start.
Sector concentration. Despite diversification efforts under Vision 2030, most MENA capital still flows to fintech, proptech, and consumer tech. Deep tech founders need to align their pitch explicitly with Vision 2030 priority sectors such as energy, AI, biotech, agri-food, water, advanced materials in order to access sovereign and institutional capital.
The relationship imperative. Cold outreach into MENA VC can have close to zero response rate. But the three-model framework in this post exists precisely to gain a warm entry point to move forward. That should be your strategy.
Israel:
Geopolitical context. The 2023–2025 conflict has created significant disruption in talent mobility, international investor hesitancy, and operational complexity. Yet Israel’s tech market is at record high, and deal flow has recovered strongly ($1.34 billion in deep tech in 2025 alone ). Anyone looking at Israel-based partnerships should be clear-eyed about the operating environment, but also recognize that the start-up market is world-class.
Geographic concentration. The ecosystem is heavily concentrated in Tel Aviv. Outside the city, investor density, corporate R&D presence, and infrastructure thin out considerably. This could determine where to locate operations or seek co-founders.
The Abraham Accords opportunity. The UAE-Israel corridor opened by the Accords is accelerating, with Israeli deep tech ventures now routinely access Gulf capital and deployment markets. For founders building in biotech, AI, or climate tech with connections to both ecosystems, this corridor is worth mapping explicitly as a dual-market strategy.
ONE ACTION
This week, identify which of the three models you already have a connection to, before assuming you need to start from zero.
Ask one question for each model:
Model 1 — The Research Powerhouse: Have you or anyone in your lab co-published, co-presented, or collaborated with a KAUST researcher in the last three years? If yes, that relationship could create a introduction to KAUST Innovation Ventures, the TAQADAM Accelerator, and the Destination Deep Tech spin-in program. Email that researcher this week; not to pitch, but to ask what the commercialization pathway at KAUST looks like from their side. That conversation will yield valuable research.
Model 2 — The Campus Bridge: Does your R1 university have a Gulf campus or a formal research partnership with a UAE, Saudi, or Qatari institution? If yes, find the international research coordinator or technology transfer contact for that campus this week. Ask, what commercialization pathways exist for researchers affiliated with this campus? In most cases no one has asked that question before. The answer may surprise you.
Model 3 — The Military-Academic Pipeline: Does your research overlap with any of the technology domains where Israeli deep tech has global leadership, such as cybersecurity, AI, medtech, semiconductors, or climate tech? If yes, map whether your institution has a formal Israeli research partnership. Cornell Tech’s Technion connection is the most direct bridge for US founders; Northwestern’s Israel Innovation Project is another. If neither applies, you might try OurCrowd, Israel’s largest equity crowdfunding platform with a global investor network, which runs a founder program that is accessible to international deep tech founders without requiring Israeli incorporation or relocation.
Still uncertain? Search your institution’s research database for KAUST, UAE, Abu Dhabi, Tel Aviv, or Technion co-authorships (or others with MENA connections) in your department over the last five years. These contacts can become part of your practical roadmap to getting supported and funded.
For all of these models, the capital is there and warm introductions are available for those with university affiliations. You just need to make it happen.
Sources
- University Herald: “Qatar Spent $1.1 Billion on US Universities in One Year” (February 12, 2026)
- Global Venturing: “Saudi Arabia’s KAUST Seeks Global VC Money After Spinouts Raise $1B” (January 22, 2026)
- MeaTech Watch: “KAUST Spinouts Raise $1B” (January 25, 2026)
- KAUST Innovation Ventures (innovation.kaust.edu.sa) · Arab Founders: “KAUST TAQADAM 9th Cohort” (May 2026)
- Waveup: “Top Investors and VC Firms in Dubai 2026” (May 2026)
- MAGNiTT: “4 Expert-Led MENA VC Predictions for 2026” (February 4, 2026)
- INTLBM: “UAE Venture Capital and Angel Investor Ecosystem” (March 11, 2026)
- NYU Abu Dhabi: startAD AI for Good Initiative (December 2025)
- NYU Abu Dhabi: ChatSign Launch (May 2026)
- Sadu Capital: “Top 10 VC Firms in MENA 2026”
- Jewish News: “Israeli Universities Rank in World Top 10” (February 24, 2026) · Tracxn: “Deep Tech in Israel 2026”
- Startup Nation Central: “What Makes Israel a Tech Hub” (January 27, 2026) ·
- Ynetnews: “Tel Aviv University, Technion Rank Among World’s Top 10” (May 2026)
- WTN Insider: “Israel Startup Ecosystem Explained” (May 1, 2026)
- Northwestern University Israel Innovation Project (2025)
Photo by Albert Canite on Unsplash