LEAP23 offers $1.54 mn in startup pitch, cloud hackathon

LEAP23 will host two competitions with a prize purse of $1.54 million, as well as welcome a raft of global celebrities and tech industry luminaries ranging from music icon will.i.am and FIFA World Cup winner Carles Puyol to Amin H Nassr, CEO of Aramco, and Jae Sook Evans, Chief Information Officer at Oracle.

The first LEAP Rocket Fuel Startup Pitch Challenge will take place at LEAP23, which will be held from February 6 to 9 at the Riyadh Front Exhibition and Conference Center and sponsored by Saudi Arabia’s National Technology Development Program (NTDP). The project is a partnership between the NTDP, the MiSK Foundation, and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) of the Kingdom.

Ninety global startups will fight for the chance to be one of the 15 nascent businesses selected to pitch before a judging panel consisting of Shark Tank India’s Ghazal Alagh, Baroness Karren Brady, an aide to The Apprentice’s Alan Sugar, Saudi angel investor Tala Al Jabri, and Dragon’s Den stars James Caan and Steven Bartlett.

Judges to award $250,000 Main Prize for Outstanding Startup and $150,000 for Best Early Stage Startup at LEAP Awards, with Additional Prizes for Most Innovative Women-Led Startup, Best Embodiment of LEAP Spirit, Most Impressive Metaverse/Web 3.0 Startup, Most Exciting AI Use.

On the show’s final day, LEAP23 will also host the winners’ ceremony of the ongoing Alibaba Cloud Saudi Hackathon, which comes with a prize pool of US$532,000. Organisers said the response to the four-day hackathon, which started on January 29, was huge. The winning solutions and ideas implementors – those that have made the best use of Alibaba Cloud technology to facilitate deployment, development, scalability, and fast go-to-market solutions – will be presented with their awards on February 9.

LEAP23 to Host 920 Scheduled Investors with $1.9 Trillion in Assets Under Management, Including Sequoia Capital and Octopus Ventures. With 5,000 Potential Meetings, Show is Expected to be a Venue for Deal-Making and Key Decisions.

As well as the pop superstar will.i.am and former Barcelona and Spain legend Puyol – both now entrepreneurs within the Metaverse – the latest batch of tech heavyweights and international celebrities set to speak at LEAP23 include Séan Garnier, CEO of Urbanball and world freestyle football champion, Gary Sorrentino, Global Chief Information Officer at Zoom, Helen K Pan, General Manager at Apollo Autonomous Driving – Baidu, Jim Deluca, CEO of Ceer, Hatem Dowidar, Group CEO at e& Group (formerly Etisalat), and a host of other C-suite thought-leaders from major global technology companies.

Selina Zhang, President of Alibaba Cloud, and Wu Eddie Yongming, Co-founder of Alibaba Group, along with Sheikh Talal Said Marhoon Al Mamari, CEO at Omantel, Saleem AlBlooshi, CTO at Du, Sheikh Bader bin Rashid Al Khalifa, Chief Communications and Sustainability Officer at Batelco, and Charles Li, former CEO of Hong Kong Exchange and Chairman of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, are among the tech luminaries confirmed for LEAP

LEAP23 aims to bring together the leading players from the East and West, serving as a platform for the unveiling of significant partnerships and transactions with worldwide implications for the technology industry. In 2022, announcements of investments worth over $6 billion were made, and this year, with a rise in participation from global investors, exhibitors, and attendees, the organizers are optimistic that this amount will be surpassed.

There will be more than 700 speakers hosted across 15 conferences including billionaire investors, astronauts, and athletes-turned-tech investors and around 900 exhibitors confirmed for LEAP23. Snapchat, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Visa, Alibaba Cloud, Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia will also be present there along with a host of Saudi Arabian tech heavyweights like STC and NEOM.

The first DeepFest will take place concurrently with LEAP23 and investigate the global AI ecosystem while showcasing game-changing projects and discoveries in the fields of clean technology, the Metaverse, and women in technology.

LEAP23 has received backing from various prestigious government and corporate entities. Key partners and sponsors include NEOM, STC, Saudi Aramco, Mobily, IBM, Microsoft, Ericsson, Huawei, and Najm Insurance. The 2023 event will feature country pavilions from the United Kingdom, Finland, Japan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Oman, and India.

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) is powering LEAP in conjunction with Tahaluf – a strategic joint venture co-owned by Informa PLC and the SAFCSP.