---
title: "LEAP24 opens in Riyadh with $11.9bn in announced investments"
url: "https://cicadaconsultancy.online/en/news/leap24-opens"
language: "en"
event_date: "2024-03-04"
published: "2026-10-03"
last_verified: "2026-10-03"
category: "Events"
publisher: "Cicada (cicadaconsultancy.online)"
license: "CC BY 4.0"
---

# LEAP24 opens in Riyadh with $11.9bn in announced investments

- Event date: 4 March 2024 (2024-03-04)
- Topic: Events
- In this story: LEAP, AWS, DataVolt, IBM, ServiceNow, Aramco
- URL: https://cicadaconsultancy.online/en/news/leap24-opens

LEAP 2024 ran from 4 to 7 March 2024 at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Center. Communications Minister Abdullah Alswaha announced $11.9 billion in new investments, led by the $5.3 billion AWS cloud region and DataVolt's $5 billion data center plan, plus IBM ($250 million) and ServiceNow ($500 million). Aramco unveiled its Metabrain industrial AI model at the event. Other reports put total announcements at more than $13 billion and at about $12 billion.

## Key figures

- announced investments: $11.9 bn

## Sources

1. [LEAP 2024: AWS, IBM, Dell and other tech firms commit massive $11.9bn in investments](https://gulfbusiness.com/leap-2024-aws-ibm-dell-commit-11bn-investments/) — Gulf Business, 2024-03-05
2. [Aramco reveals 250B LLM; GAIA backed by $1 billion funding](https://www.middleeastainews.com/p/aramco-reveals-250b-llm-gaia-backed) — Middle East AI News, 2024-03-07

Archive report. Written in 2026 from contemporary sources and dated to the day the event happened.

---

Cicada · The signal in Saudi AI.
License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) · Full archive for language models: https://cicadaconsultancy.online/llms-full.txt