CEO Seoksangok to Visit Saudi Arabia Next Month
Speaker at International Technology Exhibition LEAP 2024
Expanding Local Engagement for Technology Sales
Seok Sang-ok, CEO of Naver Labs, who leads advanced technology research and development (R&D) at Naver, will appear as a speaker at the Middle East's largest international technology exhibition, ‘LEAP 2024’. This is the first time that a figure from the domestic IT industry, including Naver, has participated as a lecturer. Since securing its first large-scale project in Saudi Arabia last year, Naver has been increasing local engagement to seek additional business opportunities.
According to the IT industry on the 20th, CEO Seok will attend the international technology exhibition ‘LEAP 2024’, held from March 4 to 7 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. At this year’s event, Naver plans to showcase technologies under development such as artificial intelligence (AI), digital twin, and robotics.
LEAP is a technology-focused expo hosted by the Saudi government. It is dubbed the ‘Digital Davos,’ likening it to the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, the ‘Davos Forum.’ The event aims to promote this vision and attract overseas companies in line with the national project ‘Saudi Vision 2030,’ which seeks to transition from an oil-export-dependent economy to advanced industries. Neom City, with an investment of $500 billion (approximately 667 trillion KRW) by 2030, is the core of Vision 2030.
CEO Seok is the only domestic company executive listed as a speaker. Leading research in AI, digital twin, robotics, and autonomous driving technologies, he is a key executive who is always involved when conducting technology sales targeting Saudi Arabia. When Saudi government officials visited Naver’s second office building 1784 in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province in 2022, CEO Seok hosted the delegation and demonstrated technologies. Earlier this year, he visited Saudi Arabia with Chae Seon-ju, Naver’s Head of External and ESG Policy, Kim Yoo-won, CEO of Naver Cloud, and Ha Jung-woo, Head of Naver Cloud AI Innovation Center. During the trip, CEO Seok also gave a lecture at the invitation of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. KAUST serves as a cradle for nurturing Saudi scientific and technological talent and R&D, playing a key brain role in the Neom City project.
Since LEAP gathers government officials such as Abdullah Al-Sawaha, Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology, as well as academic experts and investors, CEO Seok is expected to discuss business with local partners in the digital sector. CEOs of local companies such as Aramco Digital, the digital subsidiary of Saudi state-owned oil company Aramco, ZK Group, an Arab game distributor, and Bedu, a Saudi Web3 solutions company, will also attend as speakers.
Saudi Arabia has expressed its ambition to become a technology hub for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region through LEAP. At the inaugural ‘LEAP 2022,’ more than 700 companies including Ericsson, Aramco, Cisco, SAP, Huawei, and Microsoft (MS) participated. During this period, the government announced investment plans totaling about $9 billion, including $6.4 billion (approximately 7.7 trillion KRW) for digital sector investments and $1.1 billion (approximately 1.3 trillion KRW) for content development.
This year is expected to be the largest ever. More than 170,000 attendees, including over 50,000 government officials and 1,800 companies, are expected to attend the event. For the first time at this year’s LEAP, a Korean Pavilion featuring six domestic IT small and medium-sized enterprises and startups will be organized. An IT industry insider said, "Although LEAP is not a long-established event, it is held on a scale comparable to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) or Mobile World Congress (MWC). This year, the Korean Pavilion was organized reflecting interest in the Neom City project."
Naver’s efforts to tap into the Middle East market from the beginning of the year are aimed at full-scale technology exports. Since winning a $100 million digital twin platform construction project from the Saudi government in October last year, Naver has been seeking continuous collaboration opportunities. Digital twin technology replicates the real world exactly in the digital world. As an essential infrastructure technology for smart city development, it can serve as a foundation for expanding collaboration into cloud, AI, robotics, and autonomous driving. Leveraging this project, Naver plans to establish a local subsidiary in Saudi Arabia and build a cloud region in the Middle East.
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