LEAP, Saudi Arabia’s international technology conference, witnessed $11.9 billion of investment deals across different sectors over its four days this week, with artificial intelligence and cloud services being the main beneficiaries of the financing spree, as the summit wrapped up on Thursday.
The summit, dubbed by some as “the digital Davos,” ran in Riyadh on March 4-7 and saw more than 600 start-ups exhibiting and over 1,300 investors attending, as well as some of the world's major tech companies. The forum started off with a significant announcement from the host: The kingdom would be pumping $1 billion into a regional AI start-up accelerator. The accelerator, called GAIA, is a collaboration between the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority, the US-headquartered global AI community New Native and the Saudi National Technology Development Program. It has already recruited more than 50 AI start-ups.
Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha announced the $11.9 billion in total investments, an increase from last year’s total of $9 billion. The kingdom is looking to become a global technology hub in line with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 initiative to wean the country's economy off of its reliance on oil.
Speaking on Saudi Arabia’s VC (venture capital) funding, the minister said, “When it comes to resilience, while the whole world was facing headwinds when it comes to VC funding with negative 30 to 40%, the kingdom, under His Royal Highness’s leadership, we adjusted the sail and changed the headwinds into tailwinds and we grew by 33%.”
