Marking the start of its fifth edition, LEAP opened on Tuesday with more than $15 billion in technology investments and strategic commitments, reinforcing the event's position as a global launchpad for innovation and reflecting the rapid growth of Saudi Arabia's technology sector since the inaugural edition in 2022.
Opening LEAP 5, Eng Abdullah Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, highlighted the rapid expansion of Saudi Arabia's technology sector. Since LEAP's launch, the Kingdom's digital economy has grown by 69 per cent, from $118 billion to $199 billion, while women now represent 36 per cent of the technology workforce.
The opening day featured a series of major announcements across AI infrastructure, cloud computing and autonomous technologies. Among the headline announcements, HUMAIN unveiled HUMAIN M3, a new open-weights Arabic language model trained on more than one trillion Arabic tokens, alongside HUMAIN Voice, a conversational AI platform designed for multiple Arabic dialects including Saudi, Maghrebi, Egyptian and Levantine Arabic.
Tareq Amin, Chief Executive Officer of HUMAIN, said: "No company delivers something at this scale on its own. What you are seeing is a country rallied around a mission, with partners across the Kingdom building alongside us. The leadership understood early that AI is a foundational technology rather than an additive one, and everything we are building serves that vision."
HUMAIN also announced a strategic partnership with Applied Intuition to deploy physical AI technologies across Saudi Arabia, beginning with autonomous trucking. The collaboration aims to establish the world's largest autonomous trucking network, with thousands of autonomous vehicles expected to operate across key Saudi logistics corridors by 2030.
Additional announcements included a $5 billion joint investment between HUMAIN and AWS in the AWS HUMAIN AI Zone, supporting the development of advanced AI infrastructure and cloud capabilities in the Kingdom. Adobe also highlighted its contribution to Saudi Arabia's creative economy, which has reached $4 billion over the past 12 months through investment in digital creativity and innovation.
Meanwhile, xAI announced one of its most significant international expansions to date, with a major Saudi-based data centre deployment beginning with 50MW of capacity and scaling to 500MW, while AMD and HUMAIN confirmed the deployment of AMD's largest inference cluster outside the United States.
The scale of investment and the presence of global technology leaders at LEAP reflects Saudi Arabia’s growing position as a global centre for technology investment, infrastructure and innovation, said LEAP organisers.
Mike Champion, Co-founder of LEAP and CEO of Tahaluf, said: “Since 2022, LEAP has helped establish Saudi Arabia as one of the world's most dynamic technology markets, bringing together investors, innovators and industry leaders to create tangible outcomes. As we enter fifth year, the scale of today's announcements reflects both the maturity of the event and the Kingdom's growing influence in shaping the future of the global technology sector.”
Running until September 3, LEAP 2026 continues this week with an extensive programme spanning artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, investment, entrepreneurship and emerging technologies. -TradeArabia News Service
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