LEAP23, the world’s most visionary and valuable technology event, will host two competitions with a prize purse of US$1.54 million, as well as a 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.
LEAP23 is set to run from February 6-9 at the Riyadh Front Exhibition and Conference Centre and will be the setting for the inaugural LEAP Rocket Fuel Startup Pitch Challenge, powered by Saudi Arabia’s National Technology Development Programme (NTDP). The initiative is a collaboration between the Kingdom’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), the MiSK Foundation, and NTDP.
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, aide to The Apprentice’s Alan Sugar, Saudi angel investor Tala Al Jabri, and Dragon’s Den stars James Caan and Steven Bartlett.
The judges will present the LEAP Award and its accompanying US$250,000 main prize to the outstanding startup, while US$150,000 will go to the best early stage startup, the most innovative startup pioneered by women, the new business that best embodies the LEAP spirit, the most impressive startup occupying the Metaverse and Web 3.0, and the pitch that represents the most exciting, ground-breaking use of Artificial Intelligence.
