The Digital Davos? Or Glasto-on-Riyadh? Whatever nickname you want to pick, there’s no doubting the success of this year’s LEAP conference – the world’s most-attended tech conference.

Earlier this month an attendance of more than 200,000 turned the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Centre into the centre of the digital world – with more through the doors than even Glastonbury can boast.

At the centre of it all is Mike Champion, the Chief Executive of Tahaluf – the strategic joint venture between London-listed Informa, the Events Investment Fund, and SAFCSP, the Saudi Federation for Cyber Security and Programming.

Champion told Inside Saudi that the Kingdom was an increasingly can’t miss destination for the globe’s leading execs.

“Saudi Arabia is undoubtedly the most exciting market for most of our international exhibitors and sponsors,” he says.

“What proves this is that we have CEOs from some of the most important companies involved in technology and AI, flying to Saudi Arabia to be here in person. The CEOs of IBM, AWS, Zoom, TikTok and Ericsson were all at LEAP 2024 in person.”

“It’s clear to the rest of the world that the massive projects happening in Saudi need to be tech-enabled – and therefore, if you are a major player in technology, you need to be in this massive growth engine that is happening in the Middle East.”

With the country now an established regional tech hub – and ambitions to become a global centre - the get-up-and-go attitude of the Kingdom’s businesses provided a big lift to this year’s LEAP, as did Deepfest – the AI-focussed conference held alongside, which attracted the world’s great and good in this exciting new technology.

“When we survey start-up companies at LEAP, they explain that they expect Saudi to be a fast adopter of technology – and it has the ability to invest significantly more than other countries with similar tech ambitions,” Champion says.

“This is why LEAP has such a large faculty of speakers, investors, academics, and start-ups.

“So, Saudi’s readiness and ability to adopt and invest in technology – as well as the fact it is a growth market – is why LEAP works as a vehicle for collaborations between all the world’s major technology players.”

The four-day conference delivered transformation public and private investment totalling an extraordinary $13.45bn to support Saudi’s Vision 2030, and next year promises to be even better with evening activations in Riyadh itself as part of ‘LEAP NIGHTS’.

“With Saudi Arabia recently announcing it has already achieved its aim of attracting 100 million tourists, we’re not stopping at the event’s show floor – we want LEAP to contribute to the multi-faceted magnetism of this dynamic country,” Champion says.

All article images used with permission from Talahuf.