Saudi commits $6.4b to future tech

Saudi commits $6.4 billion to future technologies

LEAP, Saudi Arabia's mega tech event first announced in 2020, took place this week in Riyadh, starting on Tuesday morning with a keynote from Ericsson president and CEO Börje Ekholm. According to the organisers, more than 350 speakers from 80 countries were expected to take part and the event drew some of the biggest ICT brands in the business.

The headline of the week was undoubtedly from the Reuters story filed on Tuesday evening - "Saudi Arabia announces $6.4 billion investments in future tech" - quoting Saudi's Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha. On closer inspection the enormous sum adds together broad estimates for a variety of new and previously announced investments and, it could be said, seems a little arbitary as a statistic. However, does it really matter? Saudi Arabia is investing billions in technology and telecommunications, in strategic areas that are both enabling the Kingdom's digital future and creating opportunity nationally, regionally and globally.

Here are some of the most significant announcements from #LEAP22:

• Saudi Aramco launches $1 billion Prosperity7 Ventures fund (Wamda)

• Saudi Arabia launches $1.1 billion-backed Ignite to boost entertainment and digital media (The National)

• Neom Tech & Digital Company announced XVRS, a “cognitive digital twin metaverse” (WIRED ME)

• Saudi’s STC plans spin-off of data centre and cable business in a new company valued at SAR 2.1 billion ($559.7m) (Data Center Dynamics)

• J&T Express and eWTP Arabia Capital to build the region's largest smart logistics industrial park (Linkedin)

• ‘The Garage’ launched at Leap to support disruptive startups (Trade Arabia)

• Mobily, Cisco build region’s largest IoT Cloud Platform to boost Saudi Arabia’s digitization (Arab News)

• Huawei and STC sign deal to build data centers in Kingdom (Arab News)

• BARQ Systems transforms into managed services provider, launches SOCaaS (BARQ)

• Digital tourism strategy announced by Saudi minister at LEAP (Arab News)

Find out more about #LEAP22:

• Read the Reuters story on Saudi tech investments.

• Watch Börje Ekholm's LEAP keynote.

• Visit the LEAP website.