LEAP 2026 Draws More Than $15 Billion in Tech Investments as Saudi Arabia Pushes Deeper Into AI
Saudi Arabia’s LEAP 2026 has attracted technology launches and investments worth more than $15 billion, underscoring how the event has evolved from a regional technology conference into a major investment platform tied closely to the Kingdom’s ambitions in artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure and the wider digital economy.
Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha said the fifth edition of LEAP reflects a much broader transformation underway in the country, arguing that what has been built around the event since its launch five years ago amounts to a “revolution” in the way technology conferences are used to mobilize investment, companies and talent.
The minister said LEAP 2026 is seeing technology announcements and investment commitments exceeding $15 billion, as global companies increase their exposure to Saudi Arabia’s fast-expanding digital market.
From technology show to investment platform
LEAP launched in 2022, but the latest edition is operating on a significantly larger scale.
The 2026 event brings together more than 1,800 companies and 1,900 investors, while also hosting more than 600 startups and over 1,000 international speakers. Attendance is expected to exceed 200,000 visitors representing around 180 countries.
That scale helps explain why Saudi officials increasingly describe LEAP not simply as a conference, but as an economic and investment platform.
The event now spans artificial intelligence through DeepFest, fintech, health technology, sports technology, space, gaming and digital infrastructure, alongside new platforms including the Sports Tech Hub and World Tech Zone.
A separate Digital Saudi exhibition is also being held alongside LEAP, featuring more than 20 government digital launches, 30 agreements and 15 panel sessions.
Saudi Arabia puts AI at the center
Alswaha tied the scale of this year’s announcements directly to Saudi Arabia’s push to position itself as a major player in the AI era.
The country has been expanding data-center capacity, cloud infrastructure, semiconductor ambitions and locally developed AI products, while trying to attract investment from both Western and Asian technology companies.
Ahead of LEAP, Alswaha said the event would highlight multi-billion-dollar agreements coming “from East and West,” reflecting Saudi Arabia’s attempt to build a technology ecosystem that is not dependent on one geographic bloc.
He also said Saudi Arabia now has the capacity to reach as many as 3 billion potential AI users from within the Kingdom, while describing data centers as one of the central pillars of its artificial intelligence strategy.
A $139 billion digital economy
The investment announcements are landing against a much bigger domestic digital economy than Saudi Arabia had only a few years ago.
According to Alswaha, the Kingdom’s digital economy has grown by more than 75% cumulatively to around SAR 522 billion, equivalent to roughly $139 billion, compared with less than SAR 300 billion previously.
Technology employment has expanded in parallel.
The Saudi technology workforce now stands at about 410,000 to 411,000 people, up from roughly 150,000, with women representing around 35% to 36% of the sector.
Alswaha said that, if Saudi Arabia’s technology workforce were compared with those of individual US states, the Kingdom would rank as the fifth-largest technology hub.
The country has also produced nine startups valued at more than $1 billion, while venture-capital investment reached approximately $1.72 billion, keeping Saudi Arabia at the top of the regional market for a third consecutive year.
LEAP becomes a measure of Saudi tech ambitions
LEAP’s importance to Saudi Arabia increasingly lies in what happens around the stages rather than on them.
The Kingdom is using the conference to bring together capital, cloud providers, AI companies, startups, infrastructure investors and government entities in one place, with large investment announcements becoming a central measure of each edition’s success.
For Alswaha, that evolution is evidence that LEAP has moved well beyond the conventional technology-conference model.
Five years after its launch, the event is now being used as a platform to demonstrate Saudi Arabia’s wider transition from a large technology-consuming market toward one that wants to develop, finance and export technology of its own.