CorEvery new business in the UAE, from idea to first order. One platform.
Cortex Market tells a founder what it costs to open, plans the supplies, finds the suppliers, sends one quote request to all of them, then reads the invoices and shows where the business overpays. It is built and live. It needs a team to onboard suppliers, sign businesses and monetise what is already working.
The need
Dubai alone issued 58,337 new business licences in six months. Every one of them has to cost, source and buy.
Every figure here is published by a government body, a multilateral or a named research house, linked under the number. Nothing is estimated by Cortex.
The problem
The licence takes minutes. Finding out what the business really costs takes weeks, and the overpaying never stops.
Information is scattered across government portals, WhatsApp groups and word of mouth. Suppliers are found one at a time. Invoices are paid without anyone checking the price.
Guessing the cost to open
Licence, visas, fit out, equipment, deposits, first stock: a founder pieces this together from consultants, forums and friends, and usually finds out the real number after committing. Cortex Market shows every cost line by business type and city before the first dirham is spent.
Finding suppliers one by one
With most of the UAE's food imported, a new cafe or grocery buys through importers and distributors it has to discover, call and compare one at a time. There is no single place where a business says what it needs and every relevant supplier answers.
Paying invoices nobody checks
Small businesses rarely benchmark what they pay. Cortex Market reads uploaded invoices and compares each line to its catalogue price ranges, so the owner sees the overpayment and the yearly saving in one view.
What is built
Not a plan. A live platform with business and supplier accounts.
Everything below is live at poweredbycortex.ae/market. Open it on your phone while you read.
21 business types across 8 UAE cities, or a menu and a weekly volume.
Licence, free zone or mainland, visas, fit out, equipment, first stock, exported to PDF.
25 templates work out quantities down to the gram, every number editable, matched to suppliers.
One quote request reaches every matched supplier. Replies are tracked and accepted on one shareable page.
Upload invoices. Cortex reads them, compares each line to the catalogue and shows the yearly saving.
For the business
Startup Kit, supplies planner, quote requests, licence check, invoice upload with savings analysis, orders, documents, and an Ask Cortex assistant on costs, licences, suppliers and savings on every page.
For the supplier
Self service listing, claim and verification against a trade licence, quote request credits, WhatsApp alerts for new requests, placement on the templates that use their products, monthly performance report.
For Cortex
Admin console for suppliers, businesses and quotes. Cloudflare Functions API, D1 database, KV documents, Workers AI assistant, invoice reading on the Anthropic API, email through Resend. Built and run by the founder with the newest AI tools and skills.
The live pages
Time and money saved
What takes a founder weeks of calls, Cortex Market does in one sitting.
The left column is how it is done today. The right column is what the live product does. The benchmarks above show what the manual way costs.
| Job | Today | On Cortex Market |
|---|---|---|
| Costing the business | Consultant meetings, forum threads, calls to free zones and landlords. The real total appears after the money is committed. | MinutesPick the type and city, get every cost line and a PDF to take to the bank or the partner. |
| Planning supplies | Spreadsheets built from scratch, quantities guessed, nothing linked to who sells it. | Templates25 ready templates with quantities to the gram, every line matched to suppliers in the directory. |
| Finding suppliers | Google, WhatsApp groups, trade fairs, one supplier at a time. The benchmark above puts routine ordering at 4 to 7 hours a week for over a third of small business decision makers. | One requestOne quote request to every matched supplier, replies tracked and accepted on one page, business contact released on acceptance. |
| Checking prices | Almost never done. Invoices are paid as they arrive; 14% need manual intervention and each one costs about USD 9.40 to process at the benchmark. | AutomaticUpload the invoice. Cortex reads it, compares each line to the catalogue range and shows the yearly saving. |
| Knowing the rules | Legal language across several portals; which activities are regulated, what importing needs, when VAT applies. | Ask CortexA 10 step A to Z guide and an assistant that answers on costs, licences, suppliers and savings, with Cortex VAT one click away. |
| Buying meat and fish | Trust the butcher. No yield or cut knowledge for a first time restaurateur. | Guide10 protein types and 84 cuts with buying guidance, linked to the supplies planner. |
Benchmarks: Walmart Business survey via Entrepreneur, 2026; Ardent Partners 2025 via WEX. Product behaviour describes the live platform; Cortex has not yet published its own usage data.
Uniqueness
Everyone else sells one slice. Cortex Market owns the whole chain.
Setup consultants stop at the licence. Accounting software starts after the purchase. B2B marketplaces list products but do not plan the business. Cortex Market connects all of it, and every step feeds the next.
| Player | What they cover | What they miss | Cortex Market |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business setup consultants and free zone portals | Licence, visas, office. Fast now: a Dubai Instant Licence takes five minutes. | Nothing after the licence: no supplies, no suppliers, no prices, no savings. | CoversThe licence is step one of ten in the A to Z guide; the other nine are where the money goes. |
| B2B marketplaces (Tradeling, Alibaba) | Product catalogues and checkout. Tradeling projects AED 2bn+ revenue with 50,000+ customers. | Do not tell a founder what to buy, how much, or what it should cost for their business type and city. | CoversStarts from the business plan, works out the quantities, then sends one request to many suppliers. Supplier directory, not a warehouse. |
| Accounting and invoicing software (Zoho, Xero) | Records what was paid. Zoho is growing 41% a year in MENA. | Never says the price was wrong. No supplier matching, no sourcing. | CoversReads the invoice and compares each line to 810 catalogue price ranges, then points at a cheaper matched supplier. |
| WhatsApp groups and word of mouth | Where most UAE small business sourcing really happens. | No structure, no comparison, no record, no verification. | CoversVerified suppliers against a trade licence, tracked requests, quotes before and after VAT, WhatsApp alerts kept for what it is good at. |
The data moat
810 catalogue items with UAE price ranges, 25 business templates and every invoice uploaded make the price intelligence sharper each month. No competitor has a reason to collect this across the whole chain.
Supply from day one
Cortex builds for groceries, butcheries, cafes and brands already. Each client build is a buyer or a supplier for the Market, so the platform does not launch empty.
Feeds every other Cortex line
A business that costs its launch here needs Cortex VAT, a website from the build engine, staff trained in the Academy and campaigns from the media line. The Market is the front door to the universe.
Sources: Dubai Media Office, Instant Licence; Dubai Media Office, Tradeling, 2024; Zoho via Arabian Reseller, 2026.
Market size and comparables
B2B commerce in the Middle East and Africa is forecast to grow four times by 2034.
Charts are drawn to scale from the published figures. Forecasts are the research houses' own and are labelled as such.
New business licences issued in Dubai
2020 and 2021: Government of Dubai Media Office. H1 2026: DBLC via Gulf News. Full year 2024 and 2025 totals were not published on the pages checked, so they are not shown.
Middle East and Africa B2B e-commerce, USD billion
Straits Research, 17.2% CAGR 2026 to 2034. Vendor forecast; definition of the market is the publisher's. Globally, B2B e-commerce is put at about USD 22 trillion in 2024 heading to 57.5 trillion by 2030 (Grand View Research via Daily Sabah).
What the market pays for this model
Wholesale marketplace for independent retailers, valued at an employee share sale in November 2025, down from USD 12.4bn in 2021. Bloomberg Government
European wholesale marketplace, Series C of EUR 250m in 2022. FashionUnited
Projected annual revenue of the Dubai government backed B2B marketplace, 50,000+ customers, order volume up four times since 2023. Dubai Media Office, 2024
Revenue of Alibaba's international wholesale business in FY2025, up 14%. Alibaba Form 6-K
Series G in 2025 for India's B2B trade platform for small shops. Entrackr
Accounting software paying for B2B payments and invoicing in 2025, the invoice layer Cortex Market already reads. Fintech Futures
Comparables show what investors and acquirers have paid for businesses in the same space. They are not a valuation of Cortex Market; that is set per deal in the private follow up.
Monetisation
Three streams are switched on today. Five more are built into the product and waiting for a team.
No prices are shown for client work anywhere on this brief. The supplier plans below are public on the platform and are what a supplier sees when listing.
Live now on the platform
Plus credit packs: 10 extra quote requests for AED 99. Paid plans activate after a trade licence check, so every paying supplier is a verified one.
Built in, ready to switch on
- Commission on accepted quotes. Every request and reply already runs through the platform, so a take rate on accepted orders is a setting, not a build.
- Business subscriptions. Invoice intelligence, savings reports and the supplies planner as a monthly plan for the business side, where the value is clearest.
- Setup packages. The Startup Kit is the top of a funnel into licence, bank, fit out and first stock partners, paid per referral or per package.
- Sponsored placement. Suppliers and brands pay to appear on the templates and guides where their category is being planned.
- Data and leads to the universe. Every registered business is a lead for Cortex VAT, the build engine, the Academy and the media line, under one Cortex wallet.
Potential, on your assumptions
Move the sliders. The result is yours, not ours.
Not a forecast. Cortex Market has not published revenue. The plan prices are live; every other number below is an assumption you set, and the total is arithmetic on your inputs.
Context, not a target: Dubai issued 58,337 new licences in H1 2026 and the UAE has 557,000 SMEs. The sliders cap well below those figures.
What it needs to scale
The product is built. The money buys the people who fill it.
One founder built and runs the platform with the newest AI tools and skills. Scaling a marketplace is a sales and trust job, and that is where capital goes.
Walk the trade zones, Al Aweer, Ras Al Khor, Dubai Investment Park, Mussafah; list, claim and verify suppliers category by category; move them from Listed to Verified and Pro.
Partnerships with free zones, business setup firms, banks and landlords so every new licence holder is handed the Startup Kit on day one.
Trade licence checks, supplier disputes, quote quality, catalogue price range maintenance. Trust is the product in a marketplace.
Runs the admin console, ships improvements through Cortex Jarvis, keeps the catalogue and templates current. AI does the execution; one person directs it.
Arabic and English content, the A to Z guide as a search asset, WhatsApp and Instagram channels, Baabz Media in Bahrain for the second country.
Already leads commercial teams and a large partner portfolio in quick commerce. Owns pricing, partnerships and the enterprise and government conversations.
Verify the first few hundred suppliers across the 49 categories so every quote request gets replies. Switch on commission and business plans.
Distribution deals with free zones, setup firms and banks. Startup Kit in every onboarding pack. Invoice intelligence sold to existing businesses, not only new ones.
Bahrain with Baabz Media, then Saudi Arabia. Same catalogue structure, local price ranges, local suppliers. Licence the engine to free zones and banks as a white label.
Headcount, salaries, the size of the round and the investment per phase are shared in the private follow up, along with a valuation set per deal.
The ask
Fund the team. The platform is already here.
Cortex Market is open to an investor who wants a line with a working product, a sourced market and a clear list of hires. Message us with what you want to know and we send the private follow up: numbers, round size, structure and valuation.