Saudi LEAP conference chalks up $14.9 billion in new investments
Groq will invest $1.5 billion in a project developed with Aramco to launch the world’s largest AI inferencing data center in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Al-Swaha at LEAP 2025 opening ceremony (LEAP 2025)
Saudi Arabia kicked off its LEAP25 conference with a flurry of billion-dollar deals and a campaign to rebrand the kingdom as a cauldron of tech innovation on par with Europe.
Opening the annual LEAP event in Riyadh on Sunday night, Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Al-Swaha ticked off a series of investments worth $14.9 billion that were due to be signed this week.
Al-Swaha attributed the kingdom’s tech growth to the Vision 2030 roadmap introduced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2017 to diversify the economy and wean it off its longtime dependence on oil sales.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” Al-Swaha said. “As a tech force, as His Royal Highness said, this region is the new Europe.” Based on the number of startups gestating in the kingdom, he said, Saudi Arabia would be the fifth largest tech hub if it were located in the EU zone.
Touted as the biggest tech exhibition in the world, LEAP25 attracts many of the major biggest players, including Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, Cisco, SAP, Amazon Web Services, Alibaba and Huawei.
More than 1,800 international and local exhibitors, including 680 startups, are populating the exhibition floor at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Center.
Among the deals announced at the event, Groq, a U.S.-based artificial intelligence firm, said it will invest $1.5 billion in a project developed with Saudi Aramco to launch the world’s largest AI inferencing data center in Saudi Arabia, Arab News reports.
U.S.-based Databricks pledged to invest $300 million over the next three years to upskill Saudi citizens, build the company’s business in the kingdom, and contribute to the local digital economy. SambaNova, another U.S. software firm, agreed to invest $140 million to build advanced AI infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.
Tara Brady, President of Google for Europe, the Middle East and Africa said the company will contribute $70 billion to the kingdom’s economy over the next 10 years.