The $31 Million Bet That Dubai Real Estate Belongs to Everyone

Rami Tabbara and Manar Mahmassani started Stake with a provocation: what if Dubai property, one of the most exclusive asset classes in the world, was available from AED 500?

Not in theory. Not someday. Now.

In 2021, they built the infrastructure to make it real. Three years later, 2 million people from 211 nationalities are on the platform. Revenue is doubling every year. GMV is growing at 130% annually. In February 2026, Emirates NBD led a $31 million Series B, oversubscribed, joined by Mubadala, Property Finder, STV, and a stack of regional heavyweights. The round took Stake's total funding to $58 million.

What Tabbara and Mahmassani understood early was a specific absurdity. Dubai had become one of the most-watched real estate markets on the planet. Investors from London to Lagos were tracking it obsessively. But actual participation required serious capital, local connections, and a tolerance for opacity that most international buyers didn't have.

Stake built the rails. A regulated platform. Fractional ownership. Private real estate funds. Cross-border access for investors in 181 countries. The AED 500 entry point wasn't a marketing gimmick; it was a philosophy about who gets to build wealth.

The growth validated the thesis. In Saudi Arabia alone, 6,930 international investors have channeled SAR 416 million into local real estate through the platform. The team is already operating in US industrial real estate, one of the most resilient asset classes globally. Tokenization experiments with Property Finder are live.

Tabbara described the round as "validation of a mission we have poured our lives into." That is the thing about the founders who are building something real in Dubai: they identify a structural gap and refuse to let it close without them.

What Stake's trajectory reveals is that Dubai's next phase isn't just about towers going up. It's about who gets to own them.

Sources:
Wamda: Stake closes $31 million Series B led by Emirates NBD
StartupNews.fyi: Dubai Property Platform Stake Raises $31M Series B