With Ramadan expected next week, business events in the Gulf are reaching a frenzied pace before quiet sets in during the holy month.

Touted as the biggest tech exhibition in the world, LEAP24 got underway in Riyadh this morning, with many of the major players represented, including Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, Cisco, SAP, Amazon Web Services, Alibaba and Huawei.

The kingdom was quick to break news at the conference, announcing a $1 billion commitment to its new accelerator for artificial intelligence startups. 

Abdullah Alswaha, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, announced the government’s massive capital injection into the program, which is less than one year old.

The accelerator, known as GAIA, is a collaboration between the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority, the National Technology Development Program and the U.S.-headquartered global AI community New Native. The project – based out of Riyadh’s startup space The Garage, which opened last year – has already recruited nearly 50 AI startups.

Indeed, AI would appear to be dominating the LEAP agenda: The kingdom’s flag carrier, Saudia, is introducing its virtual travel assistant over the four-day gathering.

Also working the event is Mohammad the humanoid robot, a “male” counterpart to Sara, who stole the show at last year’s conference with her Arab dancing and speaking in different Mideastern dialects.

In 2017, Saudi Arabia became the first country in the world to grant citizenship to a robot. Named Sophia and created by the Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics, she made her debut at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh that year. 

More than 1,800 international and local exhibitors, including 600 startups, are populating the exhibition floor at the King Abdul Aziz International Conference Center in Riyadh, and the Saudi government is showing off 30 of its agencies to highlight its national digitalization drive.

Meta executive Greg Marra will be speaking about building the metaverse to a largely receptive crowd: the GCC is one of the fastest growing markets for digital currencies, gaming and augmented reality.

Zayad Salem will talk about the future of sports in the kingdom, from his perch as head of sports operations at Kijami Saudi Arabia.

And from the cap table: Noor Sweid, Managing Partner of Dubai VC fund Global Ventures; Reema Khan, CEO of U.S. private equity fund Green Sands Equity and Chris Rust, Partner of Silicon Valley VC fund Clear Ventures, are set to speak.

Competition is picking up in the Middle East aviation market as Gulf countries seek more ways to extract value from diversifying their economies.

In the UAE, Abu Dhabi-based Etihad, backed by the ADQ sovereign wealth fund, is considering an IPO, which would make it the first Gulf carrier to go public, Bloomberg reports.

In Saudi Arabia, which is launching Riyadh Air as a second flag carrier, budget airline Flynas said in December that it is looking into a public share sale.

UAE President Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed and Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed introduced the country’s new international water initiative and launched the $119 million XPRIZE competition to spur development of desalination technology.

In an event that took place on Thursday night at the site of Abu Dhabi’s historic Naqa Bin Ateej reservoir, Sheikh Abdullah outlined the Mohamed bin Zayed Water Initiative, which he chairs, saying it will seek to stimulate international investment in innovative ways to address the drying up of water resources.

“The solutions that currently exist to address the water scarcity crisis are not sufficient to prevent a range of unacceptable scenarios from occurring,” he said. The UAE initiative “is committed to collaborating with stakeholders from around the world to uncover these new ideas, to prove their viability, and to bring them to fruition as efficiently as possible.”

Among the initiative’s board members are Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Chairman of the UAE Executive Affairs Authority and Group CEO of Mubadala Investment Co., and hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates. Also, UAE Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Mohamed Al Mazrouei, Minister of Investment Mohamed Hassan Al Suwaidi and Minister of Climate Change and the Environment Amna bint Abdullah Al Dahak Al Shamsi, according to a press release.

The Culver City, Calif.-based XPRIZE Foundation sponsors competitions around the world to encourage “radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity” in technological development. The $119 million prize pool for the five-year desalination project is the foundation’s biggest to date.

“XPRIZE Water Scarcity is a global call to scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs to convert water scarcity into water abundance by using converging exponential technologies to address this critical global need,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, XPRIZE’S Founder and Executive Chairman of the foundation. He said the competion is focused on “creating new desalination solutions to unlock Earth’s ocean water to clean water for all, in an equitable and sustainable fashion.”

As Saudi Arabia attracts more international businesses, Riyadh’s Mayor Prince Faisal bin Abdulaziz bin Ayyaf says his city is vying for top executives with the likes of New York and Tokyo.

“Competition for talent is no longer regional or local – it’s global,” he said in an interview with Arab News.

The Saudi capital is working to enhance the quality of life for expats in ways that will persuade the best and brightest to relocate, the Mayor said.

Major international banks, law firms and companies have established their regional headquarters in Riyadh since the kingdom made that a prerequisite this year for the awarding of government contracts.

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates – Surveying the thousands of investors and business leaders rubbing shoulders at the Investopia conference in Abu Dhabi, UAE Minister of Economy Abdullah bin Touq Al Marri said he felt like “the father of the bride” at a wedding. “I just want to make sure everyone is happy and well fed,” he told The Circuit’s Kelsey Warner this morning.

Keeping participants comfortable at the third edition of Investopia, which the Minister chairs, is a fairly light lift, with the St. Regis resort on Saadiyat Island offering a backdrop of swaying palm trees and turquoise waters.

Engaging them is another matter as the confab aims to also drive investment into fast-growing sectors like technology, capital markets and tourism to the UAE.

Al Marri has said that by the 2030s, the UAE will “take the number one position globally in the development of proactive legislation for new economic sectors.” 

Funds that manage a total of more than $500 billion in assets are attending, according to organizers. Top of mind and regularly popping up in conversation for the largely American crowd are the implications of an election year in the U.S. and the direction of interest rates.

Al Marri, for his part, expressed his desire for lower rates to spur investment: “There will be a movement of capital that will [boost] investments into new areas and move the economy forward. So we hope that can happen by this year,” he said.

On a state visit to Paris, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani pledged to invest 10 billion euros ($10.9 billion) in French startups and tech funds between now and 2030.

Feted by French President Emmanuel Macron with a dinner on Tuesday night at the Élysée Palace, the Emir hailed the longstanding relationship between the two countries and said his visit would deepen their strategic partnership.

The Qatari investments will cover a range of industries, including energy, semiconductors, aerospace, artificial intelligence, health, hospitality and culture, Macron’s office said.

Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan said the world’s best investors now operate in places such as the UAE and Singapore, criticizing American funds for being too focused on benchmarks.

Apollo and other private equity firms are increasingly turning to the Middle East and Asia as deal-making activity dwindled last year due to higher interest rates.

At the start of his career, Rowan “thought the single best investors in the world were in the U.S.,” he said in a nearly hour-long interview on Tuesday with David Rubenstein at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. “That’s no longer the case.”

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates – Kicking off the UAE’s annual Investopia conference on Wednesday, Mubadala chief Khaldoon Al Mubarak pointed to the more active stance that the country’s sovereign wealth funds are taking in the global investment landscape.

“Sovereign funds now have the responsibility and opportunity to go from asset allocators to enablers of global progress,” the Managing Director and Group CEO of Abu Dhabi’s second-largest sovereign wealth fund said. Al Mubarak noted that the emirate’s sovereign funds — Mubadala, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and ADQ — are among the world’s top 10 most active sovereign investors in 2023, which he said, “speaks to the momentum that is building over here.” 

Mubadala plans to invest more in the U.S. and has increased its long-term allocations for Asia “in line with megatrends and demographics, including “Japan, China, Korea and, of course, India,” Al Mubarak said. 

On the domestic front, UAE Minister of Economy Abdulla bin Touq said in his opening remarks that the ministry is working to better integrate the seven disparate emirates that make up the country. “In the UAE, each emirate has its own strength. We’re now working to enable those emirates to integrate and complement each other to build economic clusters that supercharge the whole economy.”

Thousands of investors have flocked to the third edition of Investopia, a marquee event for the government’s “Projects of the 50” initiative, first announced in 2021. The UAE aims to build the world’s most innovative economy in collaboration with the global investment community. Funds that manage a total of more than $500 billion in assets are attending, according to organizers.

Slated to speak during the two-day conference are Adam Goldstein, Founder and CEO of aviation startup Archer; Eric Cantor, General Manager and Vice Chairman of Moelis; Antonio González, Founder and CEO of Sunset Hospitality Group; Nathan Sheets, Global Chief Economist at Citi; Giorgio Furlani, CEO of AC Milan; Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, Head of CIO Equities at UBS and Gabrielle Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Manna Tree.