LEAP 2026: Saudi Arabia Draws 15 Billion in AI Deals to Build Independent AI Infrastructure
Saudi Arabia's LEAP 2026 technology conference opened with approximately $15 billion in AI investment deals, signaling the Kingdom's ambition to move from adopting AI to building and exporting it.
Held under the theme "Into New Worlds," the fifth edition of the conference concentrated dealmaking around AI infrastructure, sovereign cloud, and physical AI. Many of the largest announcements involved HUMAIN, the Public Investment Fund-owned AI company.
Major HUMAIN partnerships announced:
- AWS: Amazon's first Saudi cloud region opens December 2026 (a $5.3B investment); up to 50MW of AI compute capacity in Saudi Arabia's first AI Zone available by 2028
- AMD and Cisco: AI infrastructure using AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs and Cisco Silicon One networking is now operational; plans to expand to 250MW and ultimately 1 gigawatt of capacity by 2030
- Microsoft: HUMAIN ONE combined with Microsoft 365 Copilot for one million users in the Middle East and Africa; Arabic-language AI agents via Microsoft Foundry; Azure data center in Saudi Arabia East opens November 2026
- Qualcomm: Launched Horizon Ultra, an AI PC powered by Snapdragon X2 Elite, available to enterprise customers September 20, 2026
Additional announcements:
- HP launched HP Garage 2.0, a startup incubator aligned with Saudi Vision 2030, plus AI R&D including Arabic-language model development at its Dhahran center
- Think unveiled Think Grid, a dedicated AI compute subscription service for enterprises and governments in Riyadh, built on NVIDIA Blackwell accelerators
Read the full article on Fast Company Middle East.
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