Tactful AI, a startup developing agentic AI-powered customer experience (CX) infrastructure, has announced a direct investment from Hatem Dowidar, former Group CEO of e&, as part of its Pre-Series A extension round. The financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.
The investment comes as Tactful AI prepares to launch its next-generation agentic AI technology, designed to help large enterprises enhance operational agility, improve customer experience workflows, and respond more proactively to changing market demands.
Dowidar brings more than 25 years of experience in the telecommunications and technology sectors. He served as Group CEO of e& from 2020 until March 2026, having joined the company as Chief Operating Officer in 2015. Before that, he spent 16 years in executive leadership positions at Vodafone, including as CEO of Vodafone Egypt.
Commenting on the investment, Mohamed Elmasry, Co-founder and CEO of Tactful AI, said Dowidar’s experience leading major technology companies serving millions of customers across the Middle East and Africa gives him a deep understanding of the requirements enterprises consider when adopting new customer-facing technologies. He added that Dowidar’s support comes at a pivotal stage as the company advances its agentic AI customer experience strategy.
Dowidar said enterprises across the region are seeking practical and reliable solutions to integrate AI into customer operations securely and at scale. He noted that Tactful AI has deployed its infrastructure in live production environments and said the capabilities of its next-generation technology convinced him of the team’s potential to set industry benchmarks regionally and globally.
Unlike AI applications focused primarily on answering routine queries, Tactful AI’s next-generation technology aims to enable enterprises to build, modify, and evolve end-to-end customer experience workflows. According to the company, the approach could reduce development cycles from months to hours while maintaining human oversight and approval at every stage. Further technical details are expected to be announced in the coming months.
The new technology builds on the company’s unified platform, which combines customer engagement, orchestration, governance, analytics, advanced automation, and agentic AI.
Tactful AI reported significant growth since January 2025, with annual recurring revenue (ARR) increasing 11.7-fold and the number of monthly customer conversations processed through its platform rising 32-fold. Its client portfolio includes Elaraby Group, Raneen, 2B, Lucky One, Erada Finance, and Simplex.
The extension round follows Tactful AI’s initial Pre-Series A funding round, announced in February 2026 and co-led by Foras AI and M Empire. The company plans to pursue a Series A funding round in 2027.
