Maalexi raises $2.8 million in a round led by Tawuniya to develop the world’s first regulated agricultural exchange

Maalexi, the company behind the Maalexi Agricultural Assets Token Exchange (MAATEX), today announced the close of an oversubscribed funding round led by Tawuniya, a Saudi joint-stock company listed on the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul: 8010), and Global Ventures, a UAE-based venture capital firm and Maalexi’s pre-Series A lead investor.

 Maalexi is developing what it describes as the world’s first regulated real-world asset (RWA) agricultural exchange, aimed at bringing greater verification, standardization and transparency to cross-border agricultural trade.

 “At Tawuniya, we back businesses that strengthen financial infrastructure and improve market resilience,” said Fahad Bin Muammar, chief investment officer of Tawuniya.

“Maalexi has built a disciplined, risk-focused platform that connects physical agricultural trade with emerging digital asset infrastructure. We believe its regulated exchange model can improve transparency, efficiency and market access across global agricultural trade.”

 “This round marks an important milestone for Maalexi,” said Dr. Azam Pasha, co-founder and CEO of Maalexi.

“Tawuniya’s leadership in this round reflects growing institutional confidence in our platform and in the opportunity to modernize agricultural trade infrastructure. Over the past three years, we have shown that physical agricultural trade can be verified, standardized and executed with lower risk. We are now building the exchange layer on top of that foundation.”

 Over 36 months of live operations, Maalexi has built a verification and risk management layer for physical agricultural trade that has delivered measurable results across four markets (UAE, Saudi Arabia, India and the United States): 70% repeat customers and 4,000+ smart contracts executed, and being recorded on Avalanche L1 blockchain and 3 patents published with USPTO, 3 under review to be published this year.

 Maalexi says this operational foundation is what enables the exchange model. The company argues that cross-border agricultural commodity markets have historically lacked a viable exchange structure because the underlying trade has been fragmented, difficult to verify and nonstandardized.