London, United Kingdom, September 14th, 2026, FinanceWire

• Synapse’s agentic decisioning platform empowers regulated financial institutions to take ownership of their credit and risk processes, enabling them to build, simulate, version and deploy risk policies 
• The funding round was led by global investment platform Partech bringing the expertise, networks and scale-up support to accelerate Synapse Analytics’ development and global expansion  

Synapse Analytics, an AI company that builds agentic decisioning infrastructure for regulated financial institutions putting policy control directly in the hands of credit and risk teams, announced today that it has raised US$13 million in a Series A funding round, bringing the total raised to US$17 million since inception. Terms of the transaction and valuation were not disclosed.  

The round was led by Partech, a global technology investment firm, with additional participation from Algebra Ventures and Silicon Badia. The new capital will be used to scale the team, accelerate product development and expand international market reach.  

Synapse Analytics Co-founder and CEO Ahmed Abaza said: “Our mission is to give financial institutions the intelligence and decision infrastructure they need to make faster, more secure decisions to reduce risk, unlock growth and build stronger customer relationships. Partech’s investment reflects the momentum we have built and gives us the backing of a leading global technology investor to pursue the next stage of that ambition.”  

Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, UAE and working with banks, non-banking financial institutions, fintechs and telcos across the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, Synapse Analytics has transformed how financial institutions make risk-based decisions.  

As financial institutions automate more of their processes, they face the fundamental challenge that capturing the speed, efficiency and sophistication of AI-native models means sending sensitive data outside the institution and relying on infrastructure they do not control. 

Synapse Analytics was built to remove that trade-off. Its decisioning solution can be deployed in any environment within the institution’s own perimeter — on-premise, in private, in public or sovereign cloud, or air-gapped — allowing banks and financial institutions to automate decisions across onboarding, credit, fraud and AML while retaining control of their data, policies and the intelligence generated by every decision. Synapse Analytics’ proprietary models run entirely within the client’s infrastructure, supporting compliance and control without sacrificing capability. 

With Synapse Analytics solutions, Risk and Credit teams can change policies directly and test the impact against historical data before deployment, giving institutions the ability to introduce AI at scale without giving up the governance and control required in regulated financial services. 

With adoption of digital financial services rising, financial institutions around the world are under growing pressure to make faster and more secure risk-based decisions at a larger scale while meeting the regulatory and data-governance requirements of the markets in which they operate. Synapse is at the heart of this shift, giving institutions the necessary infrastructure to succeed. 

Commenting on the investment, Lewam Kefela, Principal at Partech, said, “We’re excited to back Synapse Analytics as it builds the category-leading decisioning infrastructure for banks and financial institutions across the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Ahmed, Galal and their team have the technical depth and execution to scale it, and we look forward to supporting their next phase of growth.” 

Co-founder and COO, Galal Elbeshbishy said, “We built Synapse Analytics to help financial institutions make better underwriting decisions. Today, we’re taking that a step further by working with banks, fintechs, and other firms to enable intelligent agents that actively work alongside their teams — helping them build and refine credit policies, continuously enhance underwriting criteria, and monitor portfolios in real time. These agents identify emerging opportunities and risks, help institutions grow their portfolios while reducing risk, and allow them to react quickly as market conditions and borrower behavior change. Our vision is to create the AI operating system for the new age of finance.” 

Company Contact 

Mohamed Abaza – mabaza@synapse-analytics.io  

+20 12 7339 0909

About Synapse Analytics 

Founded in 2018 by Ahmed Abaza and Galal Elbeshbishy, Synapse Analytics is an agentic decisioning platform that allows regulated financial institutions to own and control their decisioning outright. Its unified, AI-native architecture connects onboarding, credit scoring, fraud, anti-money laundering (AML), collections, customer segmentation and customer value management (CVM) across the customer journey. 

The entire architecture, including its AI, runs within the institution’s own perimeter and can be deployed on-premises, in a sovereign cloud or fully air-gapped, without loss of capability. Credit and risk teams can directly simulate, version and deploy policies, testing each change against historical data before it goes live. Every decision processed adds to an intelligence asset that the institution retains and continues to build. 

Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, UAE, Synapse Analytics works with banks, non-banking financial institutions, fintechs and telecommunications companies across the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Synapse Analytics has supported more than US$200 million in lending and helped clients reduce non-performing loans by up to 40%. In 2024, Synapse Analytics won the Digital Solutions & Customer Experience Award at Egypt’s Entrepreneur Awards. 

For more information, visit the Synapse Analytics website and LinkedIn page. 

About Partech 

Partech is a global technology investment firm headquartered in Paris, with offices in Berlin, Dakar, Dubai, Milan, Nairobi, and San Francisco. Founded 40 years ago in San Francisco, Partech today manages close to €3 billion in assets for a current portfolio of 220 companies in 40 countries across four continents. 

Company Contact 

Mohamed Abaza – mabaza@synapse-analytics.io  

+20 12 7339 0909

Contact

Serra Balls
khorasynapse@khoraconsult.com
+20 12 9990 7611

AI-narrated audiobook wins Audiobook: Poetry/Memoir, transforming a journey with aphasia into international literary recognition

United States, 14th Sep 2026 – Singaporean author, stroke survivor and aphasia advocate Terence Ang has been named a 2026 NYC Big Book Award Winner in the Audiobook: Poetry/Memoir category for Brokenness Becomes Beautiful: Inspiring Pieces Of Poetry.

For Ang, the recognition carries significance beyond a literary award.

After suffering a haemorrhagic stroke in 2020, Ang was left living with aphasia, a condition that affects communication and language. Writing became a way for him to express what he could no longer always say easily.

The audiobook takes that journey further. It was narrated using an AI-generated digital recreation of Ang’s own voice, created from recordings of him speaking after his stroke. The technology allows his words to be heard in a voice recognisably connected to him despite the effects of aphasia.

“This award means so much to me because it recognises the audiobook — the very form that allowed me to find another way for my words to be heard,” said Ang. “AI did not replace my voice, and it did not cure my aphasia. It helped me reclaim something personal: a way to speak my own words, in a voice that still feels like mine.”

The project has received an endorsement from Debra Meyerson, PhD, and Steve Zuckerman, co-authors of Identity Theft: Rediscovering Ourselves After Stroke and Co-Founders and Co-Chairs of Stroke Onward.

“You so beautifully capture the experience of millions of stroke survivors living with aphasia—frustration, opportunity, hope, beauty and so much more. By using AI voice-cloning technology to narrate the audiobook in a digital version of your own voice, you have created a powerful impact by not letting aphasia silence your voice.”

Brokenness Becomes Beautiful explores what happens when life changes unexpectedly and a person must reconsider identity, confidence, vulnerability and purpose. Rather than presenting recovery as a return to the person he was before his stroke, Ang writes about learning to live with change and discovering meaning in what has been fractured.

The audiobook adds another dimension to that message. For someone living with aphasia, voice can represent identity, dignity, confidence and participation in the world. Ang’s project brings together lived experience, literature and artificial intelligence to explore how technology can support human expression without replacing the person behind it.

“I never wanted AI to speak instead of me,” Ang said. “I wanted it to help me communicate something that was already mine — my thoughts, my experiences and my words. The voice may be created with technology, but the story behind it is human.”

The NYC Big Book Award recognises excellence across a wide range of literary categories, with submissions from authors and publishers around the world.

For Ang, the award brings together parts of a journey that began when his life changed suddenly in 2020: stroke, aphasia, writing, technology and the continuing search for purpose.

“Six years after my stroke, I am still living with aphasia. I am still finding words. I am still learning what it means to communicate differently,” Ang said. “Winning this award does not mean that the journey is finished. To me, it means that even when a voice changes, it can still be heard.”

A changed voice does not mean a person has nothing left to say.

Where to Listen and Read

Brokenness Becomes Beautiful: Inspiring Pieces Of Poetry is available as an audiobook through ElevenReader and Spotify, and as an ebook, paperback and hardcover through Amazon.

The complete list of 2026 NYC Big Book Award Winners and Distinguished Favorites is available at the NYC Big Book Award website.

About Terence Ang

Terence Ang is a Singaporean author, stroke survivor and aphasia advocate whose books draw on lived experience to explore stroke, identity, communication and recovery. Since his stroke in 2020, his writing has received international literary recognition. Through his books and advocacy, he seeks to raise awareness of aphasia and encourage greater inclusion, understanding and thoughtful use of technology to support people with communication difficulties.

About the NYC Big Book Award

The NYC Big Book Award is announced annually and is open to authors, publishers and illustrators. Submissions include independently published works, small and university presses, and titles from major international publishers.

Recipients of the NYC Big Book Award and Independent Press Award will be recognised at the Awards Dinner on April 10, 2027, as part of BookCAMP, taking place April 9–10, 2027.

Media Contact

Organization: The Authors Spot

Contact Person: Teresa James

Website: https://www.theauthorsspot.com

Email: Send Email

Contact Number: +16107667494

Country: United States

Release id: 49041

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