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Press Space or K to play or pause, and J or L to go back or forward 15 seconds.At LEAP 2023 I was standing at a company stand when the man next to me said, "See that? 14 billion in one day." I said fine, 14 billion of what, exactly? He was quiet for a moment and said "investments." That was the whole answer. Every year since, a number comes out, every year it is bigger, and every year I ask myself the same question and find nobody to answer it.
This time I decided to answer it myself. I will spend as much time in Malham as I can, meet everyone I can, and after each visit write a summary of exactly what happened.
What we know before it starts
This is the fifth edition, and the first held in the second half of the year (it was set for April and moved to late August by a decision in March). The road to the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Center in Malham is dressed for it, the event runs from 31 August to 3 September, and the doors open to the public at 1 pm. This year's theme is "Into New Worlds", and 2026 is officially the Kingdom's Year of Artificial Intelligence.
Three things have changed since the last LEAP:
LEAP left Riyadh for the first time. LEAP East ran in Hong Kong in July with 25,000 attendees and 450 exhibitors, and Hong Kong has been confirmed as host for the next three years.
Minister Alswaha said two days before the event: Expect deals with Amazon and Nvidia, and the formal launch of the Azure region.
HUMAIN is ready this year. It has become a full-stack AI company from the bottom up: data centres, large language models and personal devices. It will probably do more of the talking than anyone else this week.
The organisers' numbers
Figure 1. The organisers' figures as published. I have not counted any of them myself.
On top of these, there are 1,289 investors from 1,016 firms with a combined USD 14.5 trillion in assets under management. Rocket Fuel received 3,000 applications and picked 100 finalists for a USD 1 million equity-free prize pool. DeepFest runs alongside it for the fourth year. LEAP Nights has 60 events planned across 15 venues in Riyadh from 30 August to 4 September.
The press releases leave out these attendance figures:
Figure 2. Attendance by edition. The 2026 figure is the organisers' forecast.
Attendance has been flat since 2024. When someone tells you this is "the biggest edition", ask what it is biggest in, because some very important numbers do grow every year.
The number that comes out tomorrow
The opening day of 2025 closed at USD 14.9 billion in "launches, investments and partnerships". The four Riyadh editions add up to more than USD 44 billion. So tomorrow's number will be measured against a line of 15 billion and up, and I am sure it will clear it.
But the number adds together very different things:
Capital expenditure on a schedule (data centres with megawatts and an operating date)
Partnership frameworks that run over the next five or six years
Product launches whose "value" is an estimate
Some announcements in past editions were also extensions or re-announcements of things already running. The number is a useful sign of momentum; read it as commitments spread over several years. The growth itself is excellent, and it shows Riyadh has become the new technology hub of the Middle East.
The digital economy in numbers
Figure 3. The digital economy and jobs, as the minister stated them.
There are also nine Saudi unicorns, first place on the digital readiness index the ministry cites, and 3,000 locally manufactured servers exported to neighbouring countries. The ministry presents that last one as evidence that the Kingdom now exports technology too.
What I will be watching
Setting the totals aside, these are the things I will look at:
1. HUMAIN and the operating-system story. Tareq Amin posted a picture of the Horizon Ultra on X two weeks ago and said only that it runs on the Snapdragon X2 Elite. He has been saying for a long time that the product is the operating system. The previous device, the Horizon Pro, came with the ALLAM model. I want to know which workloads run on the device itself, which go to the cloud, and whether "Arabic first" means a model built for Arabic or a fine-tune on top of something English. We build in Arabic, so this is the topic I will spend the most time on.
2. The share of live demos. The organisers say 93% of Tech Arena sessions include a live demo, against 62% in 2025. That claim can be counted, and I will count it.
3. The breakdown of the jobs figure. 410,000 jobs is a big number, and nobody has published the breakdown by function, by sector or by nationality. If the breakdown comes out, we will know exactly where the capability was built.
4. The sector tracks. Fintech, health, education, smart cities, space and gaming each have a track. In past editions the fintech and education tracks had plenty of sessions and almost no announcements. If that changes this year, it will be a sign the event has depth beyond infrastructure.
Method
I will write about what I see and post the link for each day here. Each note covers what was announced, what was shown and my view, with a source for every item. I will not rewrite press releases in different words.
You will find the big number in a hundred places before you find it here. I will bring you the detail behind it.
One email when we publish. Research, product decisions, and what teams report back.
