LEAP 2026 Opens in Riyadh with Over $15 Billion in Tech Deals

Saudi Arabia recorded more than $15 billion in LEAP 2026 investments during the opening day of the fifth edition of the technology conference in Riyadh, according to CEO Insights Asia.

Eng Abdullah Alswaha, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, stated during the opening that the digital economy in Saudi Arabia expanded by 69 percent since the event began in 2022. The market increased from $118 billion to $199 billion, while women now represent 36 percent of the tech workforce.

Scale of LEAP 2026 Investments Across AI Infrastructure

The first day included major announcements across artificial intelligence, computing hardware, and autonomous systems. Technology company HUMAIN unveiled HUMAIN M3, an open-weights Arabic language model trained on more than one trillion Arabic tokens. The company also introduced HUMAIN Voice, a conversational platform built for regional Arabic dialects including Saudi, Maghrebi, Egyptian, and Levantine Arabic.

“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.”

Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN

Cloud Infrastructure and Computing Hardware Commitments

Further agreements included a $5 billion joint project between HUMAIN and AWS to build the AWS HUMAIN artificial intelligence Zone in the Kingdom. In addition, xAI announced an expansion that begins with a 50MW data center and plans to reach 500MW of total capacity. AMD and HUMAIN also confirmed the installation of AMD’s largest inference computing cluster outside the United States.

Autonomous Freight and Creative Digital Economy

HUMAIN formed an alliance with Applied Intuition to deploy physical automation technologies across Saudi Arabia. The initiative focuses on building an autonomous trucking network along key transport routes in the Kingdom by 2030, which also connects to the regional automotive transport sector. Adobe noted that its contribution to the creative market in the country reached $4 billion over the past twelve months.

Global Market Outlook

Running through September 3, the conference continues to present initiatives across emerging technology and digital infrastructure. Mike Champion, Co-founder of LEAP and CEO of Tahaluf, stated that the LEAP 2026 investments confirm the growing role of the Kingdom in shaping global technology markets. The initial commitments show rapid development across cloud computing, generative models, and transport logistics.