News

Saudi Arabia’s NOMU Secures $5 Million For Expansion Plans

The FoodTech startup will use the capital to enter new markets across the MENA region and, eventually, Pakistan and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Published

3 years ago

July 4, 2023

Nour Nasir

NOMU

NOMU, the Saudi Arabian food technology startup, has raised $5 million in seed funding that will allow the company to expand further into the Middle East and across North Africa, reaching over 50 cities by 2025.

The Riyadh-based startup received investments from DIV Capital, Core Vision, Shurfah, and Purity for Information Technology. As well as investing in new technology, NOMU will use the funding to grow its business-to-business services across the MENA region’s hotel, restaurant, and cafe sectors.

“NOMU is committed to revolutionizing the FoodTech supply chain, providing greater convenience and efficiency for businesses in the Mena region,” explained Shehab Mokhtar, co-founder, and chief executive of NOMU.

Shehab Mokhtar established NOMU in 2022 alongside Yassir El Ismaili, Salman Attieh, and Ahmed Eldemerdash. The NOMU platform helps to streamline food industry inventory sourcing, financing, storage, and delivery, helping hotels and restaurants run more efficiently. The startup has also launched an app for families to purchase groceries.

So far, NOMU has partnered with key players such as Savola and Procter & Gamble and recorded 10x revenue growth over the last 12 months.

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The company’s success comes at a time when Saudi Arabia is pushing itself as a global hub for emerging technology as part of its grand “Vision 2030” program. The Kingdom was the second-most funded MENA country after the UAE last year, attracting nearly $1 billion in investments as the government attempts to pivot the economy away from its reliance on the oil industry.

Although FinTech was the “industry of choice” for angel investors in Saudi Arabia last year, food and beverage startups like NOMU accounted for the second-most funded industry, raising a substantial $187 million.

News

Instagram Redraws Its Wordmark And The Internet Reads “Instagzam”

Instagram’s first wordmark refresh in a decade arrives with new fonts, a restrained gradient — and a Reddit verdict of sidegrade.

Published

4 days ago

August 14, 2026

Nour Nasir

Instagram

Although Instagram’s famous camera icon hasn’t changed, the company has refreshed the handwritten wordmark at the top of its app. This is the first redesign we’ve seen in ten years, and one the internet promptly set about renaming.

“The wordmark at the top of the app hasn’t changed in 10 years, so it was time for a refresh,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote in a post on August 13, describing the new version as “cleaner and more modern” while keeping references to the original design.

Instagram says its team explored hundreds of options — all-caps lettering, camera-inspired concepts, even literal handwriting — before returning to script. “Script reflects individuality, so referencing that felt right,” Instagram director of product design Jasmine Probst said in Meta’s announcement. “The new wordmark is bolder and simpler, with touches of unexpectedness. It cues individual expression, a personal voice, both of which have always been core to Instagram”.

The wordmark is part of a broader brand overhaul: an updated Instagram Sans typeface, two new fonts — the hand-drawn Instagram Pen and Instagram Mono — plus refreshed motion and layouts, and more restrained use of the signature gradient. The wordmark is rolling out globally now, with the rest arriving throughout 2026 and beyond.

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The design mixes cursive and print lettering, some characters connected and others floating free. That hybrid approach, combined with unusually shaped “s” and “r” characters, led some users to conclude the logo actually reads “Instagzam”. On the r/logodesign subreddit, one user said the wordmark looked “fan-made,” like something built in Canva; another called it “an unsettling mix of manuscript and cursive”; a third summarized it as a “sidegrade” — or, inevitably, a “zidegrade”.

Not everyone was hostile to the new look. Some found the half-cursive design stylish and surprisingly readable, while others called it an improvement on its predecessor, and one commenter argued Instagram was simply adopting minimalist branding later than everyone else. Either way, the platform now has a refreshed identity, three updated fonts, and an unofficial new pronunciation.