Expand North Star 2024 sparks innovation at world’s largest startup event in Dubai
While bringing the entire startup ecosystem to the UAE and accelerating the world's most sought-after startups towards rapid growth and development, this year's edition is the largest and most international to date, with over 100 countries participating.
• Expand North Star 2024 is set to be the most dynamic and influential showcase yet for startups, investors, and tech enthusiasts seeking funding and industry insights.
Expand North Star 2024, the world’s largest startup and investment event, has officially kicked off in the UAE, with an action-packed opening day at Dubai Harbour on Sunday, attracting the entire global startup ecosystem.
Hosted by the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy and organized by the Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC), the event runs from October 13 to 16 at the Middle East’s largest superyacht club.
Already the annual go-to showcase for startups, investors, accelerators, and tech enthusiasts seeking funding, investment deals, and essential industry updates, Expand North Star 2024 is primed to be the most prominent, dynamic, and influential event in its nine-year history.
Seamlessly integrated with GITEX GLOBAL, the event features an extensive program and immersive exhibition, showcasing over 1,800 exhibiting startups and more than 1,200 investors with assets under management (AUM) exceeding $1 trillion.
Expand North Star brings 100+ countries together for startup success
While bringing the entire startup ecosystem to the UAE and accelerating the world’s most sought-after startups towards rapid growth and development, this year’s edition is also the largest and most international to date, with over 100 countries participating.
Expand North Star 2024 hosts its largest-ever European participation, featuring over 1,000 SMEs and more than 450 startups from 35 countries across the continent. Several participated in one of the highlight sessions of “Investor Sunday” at Expand North Star—“Connected for Success: The Power of Cross-Border Collaboration in Europe.”
Alongside panelists from France, Italy, Poland, and Portugal, Dr. Sebastian Schäfer, CEO of House of Finance & Tech Berlin, discussed the future of funding and investments.
Dr. Schäfer called for renewed cross-continental collaboration between European nations, citing the vast “untapped potential” across the digital space.
He stated, “As countries, we don’t collaborate. We need real joint value propositions for tangible success and use cases that help us work together. We have the ingredients needed to compete with the big tech companies from China and the US—but we need novel ways to utilize our advantages, harness talent, and create future unicorn factories. There’s so much untapped potential waiting to be explored.”
Expand North Star 2024 also welcomes a wide variety of new exhibiting companies from Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, alongside many from the Middle East and Africa.
Bringing together 59 leading unicorns with a combined valuation of $400 billion, Expand North Star 2024 fosters startup innovation with the all-new NS Scaleups program. This initiative has been introduced to forge collaborations, stimulate business growth, and connect late-stage startups with strategic partners, venture capitalists, and clients. The opportunistic unicorn landscape was explored in another of the opening day’s standout sessions—“Climate Tech Unicorns: Valuation, Volatility, and Venture Capital.”
During the Sunday afternoon talk, Sean O’Sullivan, Founder of the US venture capital firm SOSV—the world’s most active climate tech investor—addressed the opportunities available for the climate tech unicorns of tomorrow.
He stated, “Climate change is an urgent, existential crisis for humanity, and unsustainable, nonsensical business models cannot continue. There are opportunities for tens of thousands of startups to immediately begin solving our problems and reinventing society, becoming profitable over time. OpenAI was founded in 2015 and was going nowhere until recently. Now it’s the most valuable company in the world. With perseverance, companies can suddenly be worth hundreds of billions—even trillions—of dollars.”
Expand North Star illuminates the future of money, blockchain, and creativity
Throughout its four-day duration, Expand North Star casts a unique and insightful spotlight on the future of money, blockchain, creativity, and the planet through industry-defining events, including GITEX Impact, Fintech Surge, Future Blockchain Summit, and Marketing Mania.
The inaugural Tech Transfer 3.0 converges leading research labs, visionary scientists, engineers, tech experts, and academics to demonstrate innovation from concept to real-world applications.
This event welcomes high-tech institutions for the first time, including IE University, University College London (UCL), Johns Hopkins University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The globally acclaimed Supernova Challenge 2.0 also presents the best startups from Europe, Asia, and Africa, building momentum for the new and eagerly awaited GITEX EUROPE in Berlin, GITEX ASIA in Singapore, GITEX NIGERIA, and GITEX AFRICA in Morocco in 2025. After six months of semi-finals worldwide, nearly 200 selected startups will pitch in the global grand finale for a cash prize pool of $200,000.
In a proactive and engaging way to connect the UAE’s youth with Dubai’s economic agenda, the younger generation will also be in the spotlight through GITEX YouthX Unipreneur, featuring YouthX Talks and an Educators Innovation Pitch among the schedule highlights.
Expand North Star runs concurrently with GITEX GLOBAL 2024, the world’s largest and best-rated tech and startup event, taking place at DWTC from October 14 to 18.
