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Both closed on the same open question, whether the region could turn a proliferation of committed debt capital into a sustainable asset class or whether the pipeline would prove fleeting. So with that in mind, we’re returning for a check-up.
Stride Ventures‘ new GCC private debt report counts $4.1 billion deployed across 25 companies in 2025, up from roughly $500 million the year before, and ahead of the region’s $3.3 billion of venture capital. Debt out-deployed equity, which almost no comparable market can say.
Now, methodologies on funding amounts abound, and as is always the case, numbers can wobble from one data provider to the next. On the number itself, for example, Tamara’s $2.4 billion facility alone is nominally more than half the total. The caveat there is that this is an announced ceiling, and the audited accounts we reviewed in Inside Tamara’s Books show about $1.19 billion actually committed at year-end, which on that basis is closer to a quarter.
So feel entitled to take the headline with a grain of salt. Ultimately, however, we’re less interested in the debt-beats-equity crown than in what else the moves and manoeuvres of 2025 tell us about where things stand and where they may be going.
To that end, three observations worth your time below. The full report is worth reading if you want the rest.
Many thanks to Fariha Ansari Javed, Partner, GCC & Global Capital Formation, and Varun Agarwal, Partner at Stride Ventures, for their time, insights, and valuable contributions to this piece.
Two products, one ladder
First things first, the label “private debt” conceals an enormous amount of nuance and a good many different debt mechanisms. In the interest of brevity and sanity, we’ll distil things into two products.
The first is venture debt, a loan of roughly $1-25 million to a venture-backed startup, usually alongside or just after an equity round, to extend its runway without the founders selling more of the company. This is the product we explained ad nauseam last summer. In 2025 it came to about $249 million across 15 deals.
The second is growth credit, and it’s where the vast majority of debt capital dollars went, about $3.89 billion of the $4.1 billion. These are typically much larger facilities, $30 million and up, lent not against a company’s promise but against its assets, specifically the loan book of a business that itself lends money…
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