LEAP 2026: Riyadh's tech show closes with $15 billion and a bigger stage

LEAP 2026, held August 31–September 3 in Riyadh and organized by Tahaluf under the theme "Into New Worlds," closed with over $15 billion in investments and partnerships, a sign Saudi Arabia is moving from tech showcase to tech builder. The fifth edition drew over 1,500 exhibitors from 72 countries, 1,323 speakers, and 1,397 investors from 1,027 firms managing $18.3 trillion in assets.

Scale, stakes, and strategy
Opening-day attendance alone included 1,289 investors from 1,016 firms representing $14.5 trillion in assets, a figure that grew by the final day.Communications Minister Abdullah Alswaha called it "the largest technology movement of the 21st century," citing over $44 billion in investment across LEAP's first four Riyadh editions.

Since LEAP's debut in 2022, Saudi Arabia's digital economy has grown from $118 billion to $199 billion, a 69% increase, with women now making up 36% of the tech workforce.

HUMAIN, the Public Investment Fund-backed AI company, anchored nearly every major deal: a $5 billion joint pledge with AWS for an "AWS HUMAIN AI Zone," one of AMD's largest inference clusters outside the US, and deepened ties with Microsoft and Cisco. xAI announced a Saudi data center starting at 50 megawatts and scaling toward 500 MW, part of the push for sovereign compute capacity.