36Kr Global Event: LEAP Premier Tech Event to Make First APAC Stop in Hong Kong in July After Riyadh
Since 2022, a single conference series has brokered $44.8 billion in announced technology investment and partnership deals. The event is LEAP, and it has done this almost entirely from Riyadh.
On July 8–10, that pattern changes: LEAP East 2026 opens in Hong Kong, marking the first time the gathering leaves Saudi Arabia and its first stop in the Asia-Pacific region.
A measured expansion of an established pipeline
LEAP did not arrive in Hong Kong as an experiment. Since its 2022 debut, the event has drawn global technology companies, startups, and institutional investors, building a track record that the $44.8 billion figure quantifies. The decision to extend the brand into Asia-Pacific is structured rather than exploratory.
The organizer stack is bilateral. On the Gulf side, Saudi Tahaluf, the Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, and the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming, and Drones are running the show. On the host side, Hong Kong's Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau is the official government partner. Principal commercial partners include stc, the Saudi telecom operator, and NHC Innovation.
International pavilions are confirmed for the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, and Zhejiang province — a mix that signals the event is calibrated for company-level engagement rather than diplomatic ceremony. The Zhejiang presence, in particular, suggests that outbound Chinese firms will arrive with provincial government support, not just national-level framing.
The agenda: where the capital and the compute are converging
Sixty-five speakers from 25 fields have confirmed, with topics spanning artificial intelligence, fintech, smart cities, life sciences, unmanned logistics, Web3, and what the organizers term "creative intelligence" — a category that, in current industry usage, typically denotes generative AI applied to design, media, and content production.
The agenda functions as a map of where cross-border deal flow is concentrating. AI infrastructure and life sciences applications are the two verticals most likely to attract sovereign and corporate co-investment from the Gulf. Fintech and smart cities sit closer to Hong Kong's existing competitive base. A dedicated "LEAP East Night" networking event will compress the relationship-building phase that usually takes months of follow-up calls into a single working week.
What the data implies next
Three measurable signals will indicate whether the move pays off. First, the speaker and investor composition will show whether Gulf sovereign and corporate capital is now seeking direct exposure to Asia-Pacific AI and biotech infrastructure, or merely co-investment vehicles. Second, Zhejiang's presence will test whether a Chinese province can route outbound partnerships through a non-mainland venue, which carries different regulatory and political signaling. Third, the $44.8 billion benchmark is announced intent, not deployed capital — the real test is how much of that figure converts into operational joint ventures within 18 months of the conference closing.
If the Hong Kong edition yields even a modest fraction of the Riyadh track record, the APAC technology circuit gains a new structural node — one that links Gulf liquidity, Chinese engineering capacity, and global institutional investors through a single annual checkpoint.