$30 Million AI Startup Says Pakistan Is One of Its Biggest Engineering Bets

Pakistan’s artificial intelligence (AI) talent is increasingly helping build cutting-edge products for global companies. The challenge now is ensuring they can grow at home instead of taking their expertise abroad.

One of the latest examples is Nectar Social. In an interview with ProPakistani, its co-founder Misbah Uraizee said the company did not initially set out with a dedicated Pakistan strategy. Instead, it expanded organically after discovering the country’s strong engineering talent and finding it easier to operate than many outsiders assume.

The company is an AI startup that recently raised $30 million in Series A funding. Its Lahore engineering team is developing core AI technology that powers more than 10 million brand conversations every week.

What is Nectar Social?

Nectar Social is an AI-powered operating system that helps consumer brands turn online social engagement into measurable revenue. It uses autonomous AI agents to automate social listening, community management, and conversational commerce across platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit.

Uraizee said the company continues investing where it finds the strongest engineering returns and Pakistan has consistently justified further investment.

She said Lahore serves as one of Nectar’s core engineering hubs. Engineers based in Pakistan work on the same AI products, codebase and production systems as colleagues in Silicon Valley and New York. However, the company’s structure also reflects a broader reality.

While Lahore is home to a growing engineering team, senior engineering and product leadership remains concentrated in the Bay Area (San Francisco, US). Uraizee said this is intentional for developing Pakistan’s early-career engineers into future leaders over time.

AI to Boost Pakistan Talent

Many of Pakistan’s most capable AI engineers eventually move abroad or join foreign companies to gain exposure to world-class product development, mentorship and larger career opportunities. Uraizee said this exposure is precisely what Pakistan needs.

She argued that AI presents a rare opportunity to rapidly upgrade the country’s technical workforce by placing junior engineers inside globally competitive product teams, where they can learn by building real products rather than working on isolated outsourced projects.

Uraizee added that money alone will not build Pakistan’s AI ecosystem. Exposure to high engineering standards, experienced mentors, global customers and production-scale software development creates lasting value that eventually attracts investment, not the other way around.

She explained that Pakistan’s biggest untapped advantage is the gap between perception and reality. While many international companies still overlook the country, those that have invested (including Careem, Motive and now Nectar) have demonstrated that Pakistan can support world-class engineering organizations at scale.

Looking ahead, Uraizee sees Pakistan’s most realistic opportunity as becoming a global AI talent hub before aspiring to become a major AI product powerhouse. This will require predictable regulations, stronger protection of intellectual property, easier business conditions and tax policies that encourage skilled engineers and founders to remain in the country instead of seeking opportunities elsewhere.

For now, Pakistan’s AI engineers are already helping shape products used by millions worldwide.

The next challenge is ensuring that the talent nurtured in Pakistan not only powers global AI companies but also drives the country’s own innovation ecosystem in the years ahead, she added.