KNOT Technologies has raised $1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by A15. The company will use this money to grow its AI-based ticketing and access control platform for live events. KNOT wants to change how tickets are sold, tracked, and used, making the system safer and more transparent for both organisers and fans.
For many years, ticketing systems have relied on old technology. This has made it hard for event organisers to understand demand, exposed fans to ticket fraud, and allowed a lot of money to move into unregulated resale markets. KNOT Technologies believes this is not unavoidable and that the problem can be solved using better data and AI.
The founders of KNOT, who have previously worked at companies like Meta, Goldman Sachs, and Mubadala, spent months researching the ticketing industry. They spoke with event organisers, venue owners, and operators across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Everywhere they looked, they found the same problems: limited visibility for organisers, lost revenue in secondary markets, and fans being forced to use unsafe resale platforms.
KNOT’s solution uses AI to verify identities control how tickets are distributed, and track demand in real time. This helps event owners prevent unauthorised ticket transfers, reduce revenue loss, and build a clearer and more direct relationship with attendees.
After launching its platform, KNOT has already gained more than 50 enterprise customers and is now publicly coming out of stealth mode.
“Ticketing has become a financial black hole, with value leaking into unregulated channels and no modern tools to prevent it. Organisers lack visibility and control and fans are paying the price. That is why we started KNOT, to unlock real economic value and rebuild trust between businesses and their customers,” co-founder and CEO Ahmed Abdalla said.
“The technical challenge here is significant, which is what makes it so compelling. Fraud today is constantly adapting. Staying ahead of that requires engineering for resilience, not just scale, and building systems that learn faster than the threats they face. As we scale, the underlying technology has the potential to create value far beyond ticketing,” co-founder and CTO Hussein ElBendak said.
“We invested in KNOT because the team is tackling a complex global problem with a genuinely novel approach. Their technology has the potential to reshape how trust and identity work in ticketing, and we believe they are uniquely positioned to lead this transformation,” said Karim Beshara, founder and managing partner at A15.
With the new funding, KNOT plans to improve its product, expand into international markets and build stronger integrations with partners across the live events industry.
The company wants to become the core technology behind the next generation of events, helping organisers, venues, and fans connect through safer, smoother, and more data-driven experiences.
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