iSchool, a leading programming and AI education platform for school students in the Middle East and North Africa, has acquired Rubikal, a global software engineering company. The acquisition brings Rubikal's 21-strong engineering team into iSchool's technology division. The deal follows over three years of technical collaboration, during which Rubikal served as iSchool's core engineering partner. Rubikal's leadership will join iSchool's senior management, with Mohammed Ibrahim becoming chief technology officer and Mustafa Badawi vice president of software engineering. Rubikal has built scalable software products for international clients including Disney, Discovery, Strada and Vestaboard. iSchool, which has over 150,000 graduates across more than 20 countries, aims to become the foundational AI infrastructure layer for schools globally through government and institutional partnerships.

Egyptian ed-tech startup iSchool has raised US$4.5 million in funding to accelerate its expansion plans into six additional countries in the MENA region, among other things.Founded in 2018, by Mohamed Algawish, Mustafa AbdelMon’em, Ebrahim Youssef and Mohamed Nabil, iSchool offers live gamified classes led by coding instructors, catering to students aged 6-18. The curriculum spans AI, VR, app development, game development, and web development.Today, iSchool has more than 26,000 live learners, delivered over one million training hours, and more than 10 million lines of code have been written by its students, working with 35 schools, providing technical training, and CS labs, all of which led to managing national-level initiatives in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.The startup has now raised US$4.5 million in a funding round led by VentureWave Capital, an Irish VC, followed by OneStop Capital UK, Webit Investment Network, and Oraseya Capital, the VC arm of the Dubai Integrated Economic Zones Authority.The new round will accelerate iSchool’s expansion plans into six additional countries in the MENA region, as well as establishing its presence in Ireland, propelling the company to a global scale, and plans to grow a new team in Dublin. It will also facilitate technological scaling for the online coding platform, and prepare for the extension of its gamified online classroom app service throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.“We are delighted to be joined by a number of vastly experienced and strategic investors, whose expertise will not only play a vital role ahead of our future expansion but also in our current activities, managing national-level initiatives in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates,” said Algawish