When a prop trading firm shows up on a list usually dominated by SaaS unicorns and AI startups, it tends to raise eyebrows. When that same firm lands at #2 overall in the Middle East and #11 across the entire EMEA region, beating out health tech, robo-advisors, and software companies several times its size, it stops being a footnote and starts being a story.
That’s exactly what happened to FundedNext, the Dubai-based prop trading platform under NEXT Ventures, in Deloitte’s fifth edition of the Technology Fast 50: Middle East & Cyprus. The firm posted a verified four-year revenue growth rate of 4,553% more than four times the average growth rate of the entire EMEA cohort, and walked away as the #1 Fintech in the region, #2 overall out of hundreds of applicants, and #11 of 500 on Deloitte’s broader EMEA Technology Fast 500, which spans Europe, the Middle East, and Africa combined.
Why the Ranking Matters More Than the Trophy
Plenty of companies win awards. Far fewer win awards that are this hard to fake.
The Deloitte Fast 50 and Fast 500 aren’t based on self-reported traffic numbers or funding rounds, they’re built on four consecutive years of revenue growth, independently audited by Deloitte’s own teams. The program ranks companies based in Cyprus and the Middle East according to revenue growth over the past four years, and this year’s cohort was selected from a competitive field of applicants across software, fintech, and other sectors. In an industry, proprietary trading, that has spent the last few years fighting off skepticism about transparency and payout legitimacy, getting that kind of independent financial scrutiny and coming out on top is arguably worth more than the ranking itself.
It also wasn’t a fluke appearance. FundedNext ranked first in the Fintech category in this fifth edition of the program, and according to the report, the firm placed second overall on the regional list, trailing only UAE healthcare company Valeo Health, making it the single highest-ranked fintech company in the entire EMEA 500, not just the regional shortlist.
The Company Behind the Numbers
Founded in 2022, FundedNext has scaled at a pace that’s unusual even by prop trading standards, a sector itself known for explosive growth. The company has paid out more than $271 million to traders since launch, including $15.19 million disbursed in February alone across more than 8,340 traders, based on its own monthly payout reporting. It also picked up Global Prop Firm of the Year honors at the Finance Magnates Annual Awards in 2025, a peer-recognition win that, paired with the Deloitte audit, gives FundedNext both the qualitative and quantitative case for being a category leader.
The growth hasn’t been confined to its original CFD challenge model either. Over the past year, FundedNext expanded into a dedicated futures brand for US clients, relaunched CFD prop trading for US traders on the Match Trader platform, and stood up a brokerage arm called FNmarkets that has applied for licenses across multiple jurisdictions — a sign the company is building toward becoming a vertically integrated trading ecosystem rather than staying a single-product challenge provider.
The Bigger Picture: Prop Trading Has Arrived as a Tech Category
What makes this win genuinely interesting isn’t just FundedNext’s individual performance — it’s what its presence on this list signals about an entire industry maturing in real time.
FundedNext wasn’t the only prop trading firm to make Deloitte’s fifth Middle East and Cyprus ranking; UAE-based FundingPips topped the consultancy’s Rising Star list at fourth place. Two prop firms cracking one of the region’s most prestigious — and audited — growth rankings in the same year is hard to write off as coincidence. It’s a signal that capital markets, accountants, and institutional gatekeepers are starting to treat funded trading as a legitimate fintech subsector rather than a gray-area niche.
That shift is showing up everywhere else in the space too. Dubai-based Hola Prime brought in Deloitte separately to audit its payout processing, with the review finding over 98% of withdrawals processed within an hour and zero denials over a six-month period — the kind of third-party verification that would have been almost unthinkable for a prop firm to commission five years ago. Meanwhile, competitors including FXIFY, FunderPro, and Traddoo have all launched futures arms in the past year and a half, mirroring the playbook FundedNext and FundingPips set in motion. Even FTMO, the Czech giant that built the category, is in the process of acquiring a US broker to plug the regulatory gaps that have kept American traders locked out of MetaTrader-based prop firms since 2024.
In other words: the firms racing each other on growth charts are also racing each other on legitimacy. And right now, Deloitte’s audit trail says FundedNext is winning both races at once.
What’s Next
For a company three years removed from launch, sitting at #11 across an entire continent’s worth of tech companies isn’t a ceiling, it’s a checkpoint. With a brokerage license pipeline in motion, a US futures product live, and audited growth numbers that dwarf the regional average four times over, FundedNext’s “Onward to what’s next” sign-off reads less like a closing line and more like a roadmap.
If You’re Weighing Your Options
A ranking like this naturally raises a fair question for traders: does FundedNext’s growth and audit credibility make it the obvious pick over everyone else in the space?
Not necessarily, and that’s worth saying plainly. Deloitte’s ranking measures revenue growth, not trading conditions, payout speed, or which rule set fits your strategy best. Plenty of traders end up better served by a firm whose drawdown rules or scaling plan match how they actually trade, regardless of who’s growing fastest on paper.
FXIFY is one firm worth putting in that comparison. We’ve covered its drawdown rules and scaling plan in detail, and if cost is part of your decision, there’s also an active FXIFY discount code worth checking before you commit to an account size. It’s not a verdict on which firm is “better”, just another data point alongside FundedNext’s audited growth, so the decision is yours to make with full context.
Sources: Deloitte Middle East, TradingView/Finance Magnates, Cyprus Mail
