This year’s LEAP Tech Conference — the largest global gathering for technology and digitization developments held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — gathered over 100,000 tech innovators and leading experts from around the world to discover new ideas, build new partnerships, and connect with inspiring mentors and investors.
Web3 was one of the emerging technologies included in several of the plans.
For example, The Sandbox inked an MOU with the Saudi Arabia Digital Government Authority (DGA), and KPMG launched its metaverse platform.
While the Sandbox metaverse and Saudi Arabia DGA have yet to reveal details about their partnership, Sébastien Borget, the Sandbox’s Co-founder and COO, described their partnership as one of “exploring, advising, and supporting” each other in their metaverse plans.
Meanwhile, KPMG — one of the Big Four accounting organizations — has established a Centre of Excellence (CoE) for the metaverse, with the goal of accelerating metaverse and digital twin (digital counterpart of real-world physical product) applications in Saudi Arabia.
KPMG has also established a dedicated co-investment fund for metaverse use cases in Saudi Arabia, with the goal of accelerating the technology’s practical use in collaboration with public and private partners.
Saudi Arabia has been heavily active in Web3 thus far, as also evidenced by Meta’s recent announcement of the opening of the MENA region’s first metaverse academy in Saudi Arabia.
