LEAP 2026 has brought around $15B in investments, partnerships and computing infrastructure agreements to Riyadh, highlighting Saudi Arabia’s push to build and export technology rather than simply adopt it.
Held under the theme “Into New Worlds,” the conference has focused heavily on AI infrastructure, sovereign cloud services, physical AI and logistics. Several of the largest announcements involve HUMAIN, the Public Investment Fund-owned AI company.
Amazon Web Services said its first Saudi cloud region remains on track to open in December 2026, backed by a planned investment of more than $5.3B. AWS and HUMAIN also plan to provide up to 50 megawatts of capacity for Saudi Arabia’s first AI Zone by 2028.
AMD, Cisco and HUMAIN said AI infrastructure using AMD GPUs and Cisco networking is already operational in the Kingdom. The companies plan to expand this to as much as 250 megawatts from 2027, with a longer-term goal of up to 1 gigawatt by 2030.
Microsoft expanded its HUMAIN partnership around AI productivity tools for up to one million users across the Middle East and Africa. It also said its Saudi Arabia East cloud region will open in November 2026.
Other announcements included HP’s HP Garage 2.0 startup incubator, Think’s subscription-based Think Grid AI compute service in Riyadh, and new AI PC initiatives from HUMAIN with Microsoft and Qualcomm.
Source: Fast Company Middle East
